


In Our Eternity

by Sanguinifex (Eros_Scribens)



Series: The Blighted Blight + Two Poorly Adjusted Elves [14]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening, Dragon Age: The Calling
Genre: (that's basically what darkspawn are), Abusive Relationships, Afterlife/Cthonic Setting, Alternate universe where things are named slightly different things, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Animal Death, Biting, Blood Drinking, Body Horror, Braaains, Broodmothers (Dragon Age), Claws, Cock & Ball Torture, Consensual Darkspawn Sex, Consensual Sex Magic, Cunnilingus, Eating Raw Meat, Eldritch Apotheosis, Extreme Amounts of Body Fluids, F/F, Frottage, Gore, Grease Spells as Lube, Guro, Herblore, Hygrophilia, Illnesses, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Klismaphilia, M/M, Mad Science, Magic, Masturbation, Medical Procedures, Meta, Mind Control, Monster Transformation, Monster sex, Multiple Orgasms, Mutual Masturbation, Oral Sex, Orcs, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Overstimulation, Polyamory, Read the tags for the love of the Maker, Rimming, Sacrilege, Science Fiction, Sex Magic, Sex Pollen, Sexualized Darkspawn, Sounding, Surprising amounts of microbiology, Underworld, Vaginal Fingering, Vampire Tropes, With claws, Xeno, fear kink, things being scientific terminology and inventions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2018-08-24 13:35:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 41
Words: 121,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8374081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eros_Scribens/pseuds/Sanguinifex
Summary: Dragon Age: The Calling tells us what happens to Wardens who don't die on their Callings. Inquisition tells us that killing an ancient magister probably doesn't mean he's actually dead. In the seventh decade of the Dragon Age, two of the Old Gods are still uncorrupted, and a certain someone is looking for Alim Surana, formerly the Wardens' greatest Blight researcher, to try to save them. Not an easy task, to be sure, but they have all the time in the world.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the final line of [Codex Entry: The Lost Temple of Dirthamen](dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Codex_entry:_The_Lost_Temple_of_Dirthamen). Dirthamen is the Elvhen god of knowledge and secrets (who has some interesting overlap with Dumat), whose vallaslin Alim eventually got at some point during the time when he and Zevran were on the run from the Crows.
> 
> Also, I really hope everyone read the tags. They're there for a reason, and I'm exploring them in pretty graphic detail. If ghouls having (consensual) sex is not your thing, you may want to skip this and instead [go to my tumblr and ask me](https://periegesisvoid.tumblr.com/ask) about my personal take on Blight meta, if that's what you came here for, or anything else you want to ask me about, to be honest. (Just no yelling about "ew you're gross and condoning slavery bc the Architect was a magister once 1200 years ago/condoning animal cruelty bc darkspawn eat things alive," because believe me, no one is more critical of my kinks than I am, and also I'm writing horror, here.)
> 
> Thanks to @autisticmimikyuu on tumblr for beta'ing the first 7 chapters!

He lay curled up on the cave floor, humming softly. First he had fought with the Legion, shielding and healing them, and then when they had still fallen, he had coaxed spirits into their bones and fought with those instead, and then when his magic came more and more from the darkness inside him than from the Fade and the good spirits had grown afraid and would not answer, he fought alone. And now the darkspawn did not even realize he was not one of them, and did not come to attack him, and their silent song was dizzying in his ears and the Blight-fever spun his mind, so he gave up fighting and rested.

Alim Surana had all the Deep Roads for his grave, and living dead he lay in them.

“So you have come here at last, then,” said a familiar voice. “I had thought I had gotten the count wrong.”

“You’re dead,” said Alim. “I killed you. Though, I suppose I’m not surprised you didn’t stay dead, given you’re the same thing as Corypheus, probably. Or else we’re both dead, I suppose.”

“Not dead, neither of us, but dead to the world. And yes, I am like Corypheus—I did not lie to you, back then, I simply had no memory. You fixed that, strangely enough; when I reincarnated after that, I remembered. It must have gone wrong, the time before that.”

“And the Old Gods’ song—can you hear that now too?”

“No. Of the Seven, I alone have never been able to. We each changed differently, after we fell. I can control the physical course of the Blight, but never hear it. The priestess of Zazikel became the first broodmother.  Corypheus, he could touch minds within the Blight.”

“I had a firsthand demonstration. Please don’t tell me you’re planning to do that as well.”

“I see no value in becoming a god. It did not go so very well the first time. Nor is the surface mine to take even as an earthly ruler, I have learned. So, my dominion is here.”

“Still awakening darkspawn? Is that what you want me for?”

“You’re too far gone for that, and turning you back is not what I want for you. You alone drank Avernus’ potion—yes, I know about that; I want to see what you can do in the Blight.”

“Control over the physical Blight itself—I still don’t know how you did that to Fiona, or what you did to the others with her.”

“How do you, a mage, light a candle or put it out?”

“By wanting to. But the Blight’s a miasma, not magic, except for sympathetic magic. It’s not the same.”

“Unless one is the Architect of the Blight.”

“What are you doing with me, then? I’m no threat. I’m dying. Even the darkspawn know it, unless you’re actually the one keeping them away.”

“You’re not dying. You are, but you’re not. The Blighted do not die unless killed. Most Wardens are killed, but the rest, they become the Blight.”

“Ghouls? Everyone knows that. What’s to stop me from offing myself, right here?”

“Ghouls are infants. And I will stop you. I know of Avernus, and I know some of your work, more these last few years, as the Blight grew stronger within you, and I will have what you know.”

The Architect scooped up Alim, carrying him in his arms. Whether it was a spell or the sickness, Alim did not know, but he was helpless to resist.

“You are changing now, and you may as well do it somewhere more comfortable. I could speed up the process, but I feel you would want to do it naturally, and will be stronger that way anyway. Sleep now.”

And darkness far blacker than that of the Deep Roads fell on Alim and swallowed him up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Darkspawn emissaries get their magic through the power of the Blight, meaning likely the realm called "the Void" (you know, where the Forgotten Ones are and where Andruil went mad and dragged a plague out of and made magic armor from somehow). Magic coming from the Void instead of the Fade is probably how dwarven Wardens are able to dream (including having "ordinary" dreams, like Oghren in Awakening), and why genlock emissaries exist.
> 
> It is unclear how each of the Sidereal Magisters differ in power and whether that is necessarily related to their patron deities, seeing as we only have the Architect and Corypheus so far. However, note that Corypheus has powers to manipulate Wardens via the Taint and its song (see WOT1 and DA2's "Legacy" DLC), and only uses the demon in Inquisition for amplification, and he's the Conductor of Silence (Dumat). As in, music conductor. The Architect, meanwhile, can control the physical progression of the Taint, to a degree--in essence, building with it. See also my note on Chapter 2 for more details.
> 
> Honestly, it's probably at likelier to become canon for DA itself that the Augur of Mystery (Razikale) is the first Broodmother, but I'm like "You expect me to believe that 6/7, possibly even 7/7, of the Old Gods and their priesthoods were male? Nah fam." So it's gonna be the Madman of Chaos (Zazikel) for now.


	2. To Become the Blight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some history and magical nature of the Blight, from the Architect's perspective. Alim fully transforms into a ghoul.

“These are cushions. Modern cushions. The brand mark’s a company founded this century, and they only started making this pattern a few years ago. Where did you _get_ these?”

They weren’t even in a ruin where people had lived once, like the last time. Just a cave, with a rough table against one wall, where the Architect sat, writing by magelight, and then, where Alim lay, a bronto hide piled with cushions of dubious provenance.

“When the Augur foresaw your arrival, I sent an Awakened One to the surface to obtain some amenities. I believe they stole these from a farmhouse, but left some coins in return. Before you ask, I make them leave coins on a hot stove to burn off the taint.”

“‘The Augur?”

“Another like myself. There were seven who breached the Fade. I believe they still teach mortals this.”

“Yes, and that’s why mages are supposed to be locked up in towers. Every single morning at Matins, for ten years. Plus a few months where I didn’t yet know enough of the language to understand it, of course. Who are the rest?”

“Corypheus, the conductor, our leader, priest of Dumat. The Madman, render of the veil, priestess of Zazikel. The Forgewright, combiner of our might, priest of Toth. The Appraiser, master of slaves and bloodworker, priest of Andoral. I, the Architect, shaper of the ritual, priest of Urthemiel. The Augur, who saw the way, priestess of Razikale. The Watchman, anchor and setter of wards, priest of Lusacan. Did this not survive among the learned?”

“Not in the South, at least. Nor their real names, except that Corypheus was Sethius Amladaris. Who were you?”

“I do not know. I had dropped that name when I became the high priest of Urthemiel, and I am still...unclear on memories from that time.”

“Or you’re lying. Looks like I won’t get an answer either way. How did the Augur know I was coming?”

“She sees what the Blight sees. Only a little of Wardens, though, even the very old ones; the Taint is not strong enough.”

“Well, do I get to meet her?” asked Alim, starting to get up. “And you wanted to know about my research?”

“Don’t get up yet! And eat this.” The Architect thrust a crude plate into Alim’s hands.

“What is this?” He eyed the plate suspiciously.

“Roast nug meat. You’re still as much elf as darkspawn; you need to eat.”

The meat was unseasoned and unsalted, but palatable, and the first thing Alim had eaten in days. For a brief time, he felt better, and then the Blight fever was back again, singing and fire. There was no pain, though, just weakness and sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

When he woke, he could see a little, though there was no light in the room. He called a spellwisp to see better, and though the Fade felt as if he were pulling it through a straw, the Blight within him and around him answered and gave him the balance of the power.

He didn’t know how long he had slept, of course, or any measure of time since the Legion squad had fallen, but it must have been days at least. All his skin was darkspawn grey now, that he could see anyway, and clumps of hair littered the cushions where his head had been. When he pressed his hands together, he could not feel any body heat; he leaned forward and placed one palm on the stone floor, and it no longer felt cold. In fact, he was pretty sure he could not feel temperature at all anymore.

Alim got up, slowly, still holding the spellwisp and trying not to look directly at it, and explored the room. It was the same one he’d been in before—no real surprise there. At one end was a door, shabbily constructed but sound, and locked or blocked from the outside. So much for that. On the desk were crude laboratory equipment, some quills, ink, and sheets of birch bark, and a very old book. It turned out to be an Old Tevene poet on one side, and what looked like an Old Dwarven translation on the other; at least it looked like a precursor to the Trade tongue he knew, but he wasn’t too sure about the script. Perhaps it had been looted from a thaig, lost in one of the early Blights. In any case, he could read the Old Tevene side, and he did, for several hours, by the glaring light of the spellwisp.

Some couple hundred pages in, Alim heard a sound like furniture being shoved aside, and the door opened. The Architect had returned.

“I did not think you would be awake yet, but I left the book just in case. Did you enjoy it? I believe the Old Dwarven is the closest to your tongue, of the books I have here.”

“Actually, I read the Tevene better. It was better than being bored, though I don’t think most of the farming techniques mentioned would actually work. What were you doing?”

“Meeting with the Awakened. I’m pleased to see that the first phase of your transformation appears to be complete. I must check your blood to make sure.”

“If this is your laboratory, it’s about three centuries behind the times, and you can’t possibly know the reaction to check miasma levels. Maker knows where we’d get better equipment, though. I can’t exactly stroll into Serault looking like this.”

“I do not need to ‘react’ your blood, merely examine it. Will you do it willingly, or must I spell you?”

Alim extended his left arm in answer. The Architect produced an ancient-looking but thankfully sharp bleeding kit.

“Your blood is fully black now, look. The Blight has taken all of you that was an elf away. There will be more changes, but they are slower ones. Do not worry, I have seen this before. I had detailed notes, but they were destroyed in the aftermath of my last death.”

“Do you hold that against me?”

“No. I do not blame mortals for siding with mortals. Regrettably, it is the one thing about them that is predictable.”

“Whose body did you take? Corypheus reincarnated in a Grey Warden, when he was killed in the Emerald Graves. We killed Utha before you, and none of my companions ended up turning into an ancient magister. Who?”

“Seranni. The elf whose sister was a Warden. I did not choose her on purpose. Our souls seek out the nearest tainted human, because we were human. If any of us had been elves, I suspect it would be tainted elves.”

“So what am I, a failsafe? To be kept like the elven slaves you had while you were human?”

“No. You are here for your knowledge and power. You know what the Blight is better than I or any of the other Magisters or the Awakened do, and I want to teach you to use Blight magic. You’re already doing it. That spellwisp is not powered by the Fade, I can feel it.”

“You can tell?”

“I am the Blight. You are the Blight. I can feel what is done with the Blight, especially this close to me.” The Architect turned his palms to the ground, and floated up to the cave ceiling. “Surely you felt that.”

“I felt magic being used. I have always been able to feel that. I felt your presence through the Taint, but I have been able to do that for thirty-two years now.”

“But not through the Fade. Ironic, isn’t it—I who breached the Fade, now draw only from the Void. It was there, in the Fade, pouring into the City. Perhaps that was why the Veil was drawn over the Fade in the first place. The Blight was there, long before it ate us and became us.” The Architect shook his head, and carried on. “Your magic comes from the void now; all darkspawn emissaries’ do. And I wish to see what your powers will be. You were a worthy foe, once. Now that you are changed, I wish to see if you will be a worthy ally.”

“What do you want me to do, though?”

“Practice your magic. See what you can do with the Blight and through the Blight. The Augur tells me you have an aptitude for sympathetic magic through it already, for years now. But first, tell me everything you know from studying the Blight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On Alim's linguistic ability: Modern Elvhen is (in this universe) a creole of Elvhen, Orlesian, Tevene, and Trade, plus a few bits of other languages depending on the usual route of the clan in question. Everyone at Kinloch thought Alim was Orlesian for a couple years. Keep in mind this was in Ferelden in only the second decade of the Dragon Age.
> 
> Bioware has woefully underdeveloped the Sidereal Magisters. We may get to see more of them in DA4 (though I suspect that the Forgewright may have been helping Corypheus grow the red lyrium in Inquisition, if they really do have powers connected to their roles/gods), but currently all we have are Corypheus and The Architect, and some circumstantial evidence from WOT1 and [Codex Entry: A Different Darkspawn?](dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Codex_entry:_A_Different_Darkspawn). We know from WOT1 that Corypheus was captured in -191 Ancient and held there until the 30s Dragon, so "A Different Darkspawn," with its anecdote dated to sometime in the Blessed Age, means there must have been at that time at least 3 other Sidereal Magisters running around. One of them is probably the Watchman (Lusacan), who's running a dragon cult somewhere (ask penbrydd for details, also I thinks it's in one of the WOT volumes somewhere). According to this codex, one of the Magisters gets eaten by another Magister, which may constitute some form of magical binding. This may simply have prevented that one from resurrecting; on the other hand, if the magister in question was the Architect, this binding could explain his memory loss, and would fit the timeline. Or, possibly, it could have had no effect at all, because the magister in question would have already body-jumped into a Warden or ghoul at the moment of death before any eating, binding or not, was complete. In this fic, I have chosen to give the Architect his memories back, mostly, because it's simpler that way. In any case: Corypheus is in the Fade and is probably for all intents and purposes dead, the Architect and the Watchman are probably alive, there is at least one other Magister who was alive during the Blessed Age, and there may or may not be one more (the one who got eaten, who may also be the Architect). That makes 2-3 more we know nothing about and aren't going to show up here, probably, anyway. I'm still toying with whether to put the Watchman in or not, bc that's nearly 50k off, probably. And I did base their roles in the ritual off their titles, but that's what you call "pulling things out of your ass because Bioware certainly isn't giving a shit."
> 
> Alim's transformation (and someone else's--name would be spoilers--later) are based on Bregan's and Utha's in _The Calling_.
> 
> Alim's comment on his book: He's reading the Thedas equivalent of Vergil (not the Aeneid, the pastoral works by the same author).


	3. To Know the Blight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sciencing the Blight, aka Alim's contribution.

It had been twenty-eight years after he had become a Warden, and fourteen years after he was assigned to Weisshaupt, and ten years after Zevran had become the High Constable, and seven years after he himself had become the Chamberlain, when Alim Surana’s miasma factor levels had started spiking. Even though he’d been healing himself pretty intensely once a month for the last couple decades, in hopes of keeping the Taint in check, he was still surprised it had taken that long to happen, with all the stupid shit he’d done fucking around with sympathetic magic during the Fifth Blight. The resistance factor he’d isolated years ago was still not really ready for use in people, and could not be made to work by any vector other than injection, for reasons he still couldn’t figure out, but he was desperate enough to try anyway. The impurities in the serum gave him nasty fevers and rashes, but it staved off the Calling for another few years. And then, inexplicably, the resistance factor itself failed, and his miasma levels began spiking again, and the Calling began a few months later. So Alim had set his affairs in order, and traveled to Orzammar and gone into the Deep Roads as healer to a squad of the Legion of the Dead.

And now, here he was, in a cave lit only by the smallest of spellwisps, finishing gradually turning into a Shriek or something, explaining his curriculum vitae to a 1300-year-old darkspawn magister who had never heard of any of the theories or most of the lab equipment he was talking about.

“No, miasmatic particles aren’t smells; they’re essentially infinitesimally small dust particles that cause diseases, and which reproduce in the humors, including blood. The particles vary in size depending on which disease. Optics has advanced far enough in Serault, the glassmaker city in Orlais, to be able to see some of them, but not all. Some argue that only some diseases are miasmata, or, in certain sects of the Chantry, that specifically the Blight isn’t and instead is an amaterial divine punishment for breaching the Fade, but the miasmata that have been identified differ in size and shape when seen through optics, so I think that it is a miasma and optics simply isn’t that good yet. Once we have good enough optics to prove the theory of atoms, then I’ll be sure.” He laughed mirthlessly. “And now it seems I could live long enough to see it.”

“It is odd to see a mage who focuses so much on the material. In my time, it was all about magical advancement; even dwarves were focused on runes and capturing more and more things within lyrium.”

“Well, the South is not Tevinter, nor are there as many dwarves as before you breached the Fade. Even after the Mage Rebellion, mages still don’t rule.”

“Yes, a rather strange turn of events. I suppose largely non-magical society with little lyrium access would focus on the material. A pity, though; magic was advancing so fast, and then….”

“Well, any time anything started to get good, there’d be a Blight, and then famines and unrest for an age or so after. It was luck that the Fifth Blight was so confined and over almost before it started, and came so late after the Fourth. Was that your doing, I wonder.”

“I couldn’t control Urthemiel. I may have made him a bit more strategically inclined than the average Archdemon. I wonder, how did ‘Archdemon’ become the Trade word for them? It’s really a dreadful translation.”

“Ever had to fight one?”

 

* * *

 

“…And so, if we’re actually going to work on anything like what I was working on, including making an isolation of the resistance factor so you don’t have to abduct Grey Wardens, which we both agree is undesirable, we need a lot of equipment. Including and especially a rune-powered centrifuge. I can’t actually build one; I don’t remember the details quite well enough and we don’t have the tools or materials, and we can’t buy one. So, unless we can figure out how to convince a person to get one for us, we’re stuck.”

“You can’t use magic for this?”

“You’re not a healer, so I doubt you have that much precision even at your age, and no normal mage alive can isolate something that complex and separate it without destroying it, especially with the Blight around it. That’s why I had the centrifuge.”

“But with your growing Blight powers and your affinity for sympathetic magic—”

“That’s still a ‘maybe.’ We know the centrifuge would work.”

“I’d also like to test the properties of that herb you mentioned, salvia or whatever.”

“‘Salvator korcariensis.’ It mitigates the Blight, but is toxic if taken for very long. I suspect the toxicity is inherent to the substance that fights the Taint. It’s unlikely to be of use to us, here.”

“Except as a weapon.”

“Then we’ll go to the Korcari Wilds, through the Deep Roads.”

“I want you to be stronger first. You’re not quite fully a darkspawn yet.”

“Then I want a centrifuge. Get me one. Preferably also a magnifier set.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alim is working with fucking alchemy. As noted later, optics is barely advanced enough to see large bacteria, and the Blight is a virus. Thedas also doesn’t know how molecules vs. atoms work, or what a cell is. Alim doesn’t know that the resistance factor is an antibody; he thinks it’s a drug like extracts of opium or cannabis, and so he’s wasted a lot of time the last 15 or so years of his life trying to make it into something that doesn’t have to be injected. If biochemistry were an actual thing at this point, he’d have probably turned his attention to S. korcariensis and tried to find a safe and effective molecular “cousin” of the active compound, but chemistry simply isn’t that level of good yet. The side effects of his passive immunization treatment (that’s what it is) are caused by improper filtering of animal proteins—he’s using nugs to grow the factor, because they’re common and have naturally good resistance, but they’re really not immunologically compatible with anthropoid races. Repeated exposure like Alim’s getting would only make it worse. And of course the Blight eventually mutates to avoid the specific antibody that Alim’s getting from his nug cultures, and probably Alim also managed to develop antibodies for those non-elven Blight antibodies, though honestly his immune system is beginning to completely crap out at this point. The Blight itself destroys other pathogens, and its byproducts make blood slightly toxic, especially once amplification starts, so he wouldn’t have noticed any normal symptoms of immunodeficiency.
> 
> Ἀρχηδαίμον, if I’m spelling the Greek correctly. Might be Ἀρχηδαίμων. I don’t know who’s supposed to be Ancient Greece in Thedas, but I’m going to go with “Linguistic and cultural ancestor who took over and then assimilated into a population speaking Old Tevene, which eventually became the official language but not before it got some words.” Anyway, “prime/ruling spirit/power,” aka a pretty literal word for “Old God,” or Archdaimon, but the cognate “Archdemon” is a pretty good description of their corrupted forms and their difficulty in battle. Really, though, I'm a nerd.
> 
> "Salvator korcariensis": The "wilds’ flower," from Origins, obviously. I needed a reason for why it’s not routinely used to stave off the Calling, and also a less confusing name for it. Literally, "savior/helper native to the Korcari place," in Latin, which we call "Tevene" when we're talking about Thedas, of course.


	4. To Wield the Blight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time passes. Tropes are used.

Alim set himself to work. Grow stronger. Practice magic. Work in the full power of the Blight.

There were a painful and frustrating few months, when his teeth fell out and were replaced with sharper ones. (At least, he thought it was months. He had no sense of time, anymore, save what he could approximate from how long he knew it took to read a certain amount of text in various languages.) The Architect inspected the black, bony spikes, and praised him for his progress. His finger-bones grew, twice the length they were in life, and his nails thickened into rending claws. The desk where he worked got many gouges in its surface, until he learned to pick up objects with the lower part of his first finger-joint.

He learned to affect other darkspawn through the Taint without even spilling his own blood, at first merely weakening and confusing them a little, but then pushing or wounding them. He learned to sing counterpoint to the Archdemon song, commanding darkspawn within earshot, and then, though still only at close range, commanding them without singing out loud.

Of course, he tried to test whether he could compel the Architect to drop a book. It did not work, and the Architect was extremely amused.

“You can’t even comprehend how much stronger I am in the Blight than you, and I have always been deaf to the song. I can feel the pull, a little, from the Archdemons, but from you it is like a light breeze.”

But he was not angry at Alim, no. Instead, he began to caress him, and Alim knew that he was a sculpture being built according to an Architect’s design, and as black marble he embraced the chisel.

He learned to hover, for brief periods, drawing on the strength of a nearby nest of darkspawn. He wove the Blight into his barriers, manifesting it as a deadly curtain. He even experimented with making bolts of the Blight, to hammer into and infect mortal enemies, but he had no opportunities to really test them. And the Architect urged him to practice controlling and leading more and more darkspawn at once, and he, the work, the edifice, the apparatus, obeyed. He was a soloist in a deaf composer’s symphony, the leader to which others harmonized, and the sound of his choir grew great indeed, ever greater.

So month passed into years, and into nothing, for there was no time in the Deep Roads, and all the time in the world.

 

* * *

 

“You are ready to meet the Augur.”

“The Augur? The one who foresaw my coming?”

“The same. You are ready to go to the Korcari Wilds, now, and we should ask her advice before our journey.”

“Will we be near Ostagar? I want to see what has become of it.”

“If the Augur says that is the best route. We are searching for an herb, not a place. Anywhere in the far south of Ferelden will do.”

The Architect led Alim down a set of tunnels he had not seen before. They entered a large cavern, and Alim realized why the Architect lived near here, and not in one of the more comfortably-appointed and better-suited thaigs elsewhere in the Deep Roads.

The Augur was a broodmother, but strangely-shaped and warped, an almost independent figure linked to a great mass of flesh by ropes of the same. Surely she could not have taken this form when she first fell? Hadn’t it been Zazikel who had, not Razikale? Though those two were definitely easy to confuse.

The Augur saw his wondering gaze and laughed. “I lost a battle once, and was reincarnated. The nearest tainted human was a broodmother, and my soul went into her. But only the Madman became a broodmother, at first. We think she may have been pregnant when we breached the Fade.”

Alim reached out with his mind and saw her form through the Void, as he had once done as a healer with the Fade. “There is no way to free you from the broodmother’s mass. The heart is in the mass, not in the humanoid body.”

“And even if it were not, I would bleed out if removed, we think. That is why the Architect came and found me here, once he regained his memories.”

“Where is ‘here’? The Architect still will not tell me; I only know the time journeyed from Orzammar, before he took me.”

“We are under the Ferelden hinterlands, as the mortals call it in these days.”

“And we wish to journey to the Korcari Wilds,” put in the Architect.

“Preferably, near Ostagar,” added Alim.

The Augur cast about through the Void. “Ostagar is safe. I see no Wardens along those routes. You brought things for writing, to map the way?”

The Architect produced more of the birchbark they commonly wrote on. The Augur drew, and labeled, marks intersecting.

At last she finished, and turned her face towards Alim.

“And you, the acolyte—I have heard your song. He is apart from the mind of the Blight and shapes its body; I _am_ the mind of the Blight and feel all it does. You are a rare thing, a mage acolyte allowed to fully become. The last with powers like you begin to show is now sealed in the Fade. However strong you become, you were born a mortal, not a dragon. Do not seek to become a god. Be king, if you must, but only of shadows.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surana’s Blight powers are somewhat similar to Corypheus’, though, at least at this time, much, much weaker. (Give him 1200 years.) They’re a natural outgrowth of his talent for using the Taint to increase the power of sympathetic blood magic against darkspawn, which he’s been doing since Origins. I’ll mention it when I get around to writing that part of the Blighted Blight series. I’m writing this series very much out of order.
> 
> Yes, this chapter is the start of the Architect/Surana pairing, but they're pretty much just cuddling at this point. Darkspawn, even sentient ones, don't actually have sex terribly often, because, well here's a hint, if you think Warden stamina is impressive....
> 
> Alim's other Blight abilities: For shields, see Andruil's "making armor of the void"; the rest are based on the Power of Blood abilities from the Warden's Keep Origins DLC.
> 
> "The last with powers like you begin to show is now sealed in the Fade." Corypheus, of course. Again, similarities between Dirthamen and Dumat. It is probably safe to say that the Architect saved Alim because he reminded him of Corypheus, to a degree.


	5. A Journey through Earth and Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More science and history, but also plot.

Their journey had two objects. The first was to obtain a sufficient quantity of _Salvator korcariensis_ , the “Wilds Flower” Alim had gathered for a kennelmaster so many years before, and—unknown to him then—a key ingredient in the Joining. The Architect wanted to study it, and Alim needed it for a plan to increase the Awakened without need to kidnap Grey Wardens.

“You say the blood of Wardens on their Callings does not work as well as that of younger ones, and that makes sense,” Alim had said. “The Calling occurs because our resistance has failed. But Wardens are not the only source. The Wardens have also used the Joining on mabari and griffons, for battle. I isolated the resistance, and the miasma itself along with it, and I used nugs. I tried dogs, mice, and pigs as well, but nugs produce the most resistance. Granted, using unfiltered darkspawn blood for the Joining instead of pure miasma will mean we need a lot more nugs, but we can awaken darkspawn without drawing the attention of the Wardens or other mortals.”

“I do not have archdemon blood for the Joining, though.”

“I never used it on nugs. They have no need to sense darkspawn, just resist the Taint. The amount of the Taint Wardens have until their Calling is not enough to sense darkspawn through it, so the real Joining is also a sympathetic magic ritual. Besides, Archdemon blood has the properties of regular dragon blood as well, so it produces those kind of changes in addition.”

“What if the Awakening will not work without the remnants of that magic?”

“Well, we’ll have to find out then.”

And this was why the second object of their journey was to find a thaig that was better suited for lab work, for if Alim’s idea of Joining nugs worked and they were able to provide enough Awakened darkspawn that the Architect did not have to be near the Augur all the time. She would probably be fine for these few weeks with just the three Awakened Genlocks and the Hurlock Emissary, but there was always the fear that the Wardens would find her, kill her current body as they did all broodmothers, and then capture her when she reincarnated in one of them. Alim had heard Hawke’s account of Corypheus’ former prison, and knew of two other active similarly-equipped facilities, and he did not fancy breaking someone out of any of them.

For days they walked through abandoned stone tunnels, pausing only to inspect particularly promising thaigs or to shift obstructing rocks. It was dull, even to immortals. Alim counted time by heartbeats and the cadence of the Old Gods’ song.

“It’s so complex, their song,” exclaimed Alim after one particularly intricate passage, “and there’s only two of them left. What it must have been like when there were seven!” He expected no reply, for the Architect could never hear the singing. But the other darkspawn broke his silence.

“I was with Corypheus, the day Dumat fell. He screamed in lament for hours, and claimed the song was forever broken. All of us save me could hear the song, but Corypheus understood it, and could talk to the gods as easily as I talk to you. He woke Dumat, you know. We returned to this world from the Black City, the Blight already eating us, and Corypheus said that the Old Gods’ temples at the sacred ley lines were calling to him. Of course he went to Dumat first. In the same way, when I thought I could protect the gods from the taint, I went first to Urthemiel. Even not knowing who I was, I was drawn first to Urthemiel.”

“ _You_ started the Fifth Blight?”

“By accident. Perhaps even the traces in the reverse Joining were too much, or perhaps simply being near me was too much corruption. Urthemiel awoke and became corrupted, and I was never more sad that I could not hear him.”

“I feel as though I should be angry, but it feels so long ago.”

“I think only mortals can be angry at that kind of thing. Unless it is that you too wish to have heard Urthemiel’s song.”

They passed on in silence, but for the voices of the last two Old Gods.

Many, many hours later, they passed into a path that went upwards. The air became different, moister, and they saw traces of surface animals and spiders, and then several hours afterwards, dwarven and darkspawn tunnels gave way to Tevinter ruins. The Architect stopped for a moment, looking pensive, but then continued on through what seemed to be the deepest cellars of a fortress.

Up three flights of ancient, crumbling stairs, and they came to a wrecked and plundered hall, with a draft that suggested a built or broken entrance.

“Wait here,” commanded the Architect, gliding forward. “I will check what is out there. You will not find the sun pleasant, if it is day now, and I am more able to hide myself from anyone who might be around.” He soon returned. “Come. It is safe.”

Thedas’ greater moon shone full on the ruined fortress of Ostagar. It was Autumn, and the ground was carpeted with leaves from the trees growing through the crumbling arches. Alim turned to try to orient himself in the dizzying dazzling-bright display, the first of the surface he had seen since his Calling. Eventually, he realized where he was: the valley between the two halves of the fortress, and they had come out of the passages at the bottom of the Tower of Ishal.

Meanwhile, the Architect was pulling a sextant out of his pack and examining the stars.

“We’re at the right place,” put in Alim. “This is definitely Ostagar.”

“I know it is Ostagar. This is to see how many hours we have until morning. I believe it is about an hour before midnight now, so we have a little over seven hours before we have to worry.”

“I know ghouls dislike the sun, but I doubt I’ll die if I’m caught in it for a few hours.”

“No, but it is rather painful, especially when you are this new. I will spare you some trial and error.” The Architect caught Alim’s questioning look. “We were still half-human when we came out of the Fade. The City was blackened, but we did not realize we had caught its corruption until days afterwards. We did not realize it was more than magic damage until it spread to others. Then our forms began to change, and we fled.

“But enough. We have herbs to gather.”

The moon was more than bright enough for darkspawn eyes, even under the trees in the Korcari Wilds. Alim counted the precious minutes in heartbeats and swells of song as he inspected every rotting log for flowers, marveling at the novelty of finite time. There! White petals and a red center, blooming in Autumn. He slipped on gloves that covered even his filed-down claws (the herb fought the Taint, and he wasn’t taking any chances) and plucked the flower, bulb and all, and placed it in the sack he’d brought. Now he just needed a few dozen more. A few miles later, they found the remains of a great tree that had fallen and then rolled down a hill and crashed into a copse of smaller trees. Flowers peeked out of every shadowed corner. They harvested all they could reach, taking half the bulbs.

“I think we have enough,” said the Architect. “Tomorrow night, I can show you where Urthemiel’s temple was and where he rose, but for now we should return to the Tower of Ishal.”

He was right, realized Alim. The full moon was sliding down the western sky. He had seen the Architect’s star charts, and he knew this meant it was nearly dawn. His own count told him as much. He hefted his sack of flowers over his shoulder, and shrouded in the scent of poison honey, they walked back to the ruins of Ostagar.

Once safely underground, they replanted a dozen of the flowers in buckets; then Alim explored the building until he was bored, avoiding as much as possible its arrow loops and few windows—the Architect was right; even the low light was painful to his eyes, in a way moonlight was not. He had been here before, a few times, but decades ago, and things had moldered a little more since then, hastened by the damage from the Battle of Ostagar. The last time he’d been here was—’35, he thought, once the Mother’s damage had been largely cleaned up, and he’d come down here with a survey team of Wardens, because King Alistair wanted to know if the ancient fortress could be used again. He himself had declared the area so blighted that no one but Wardens should go near it for centuries, and they had had no need to rebuild the old outpost there, because Urthemiel was gone. The wilds flowers survived, since they fought the Taint, and the trees with roots deep beneath the earth, and other plants simply grew twisted, but nothing there would be edible to mortals for a long time. The trade routes had already changed, and Lothering had been rebuilt where they were. Save for truly intrepid scholars or looters, no mortal would come this way for decades at a time.

Struck by this realization, Alim returned to the Architect.

“If we are to study the herbs here, or for that matter obtain a ready supply of nugs, we might as well make our lab here, where at least everything is not too short for us. We will need a backup thaig, but this could be our main habitation, for a while; it is near the surface, but so were your silverite mines.”

“This idea has merit,” replied the Architect, considering. “I will make my own inspection of the tower. Watch the plants for me.”

Alim sat in front of the flowers and lost himself in the song until the Architect returned. Razikale and Lusacan wove their harmonies, and all else faded away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember, in this timeline, Alim did not side with the Architect, so he didn't know about Urthemiel. What actually happened, I think: the Architect used a drop of his own blood like the Wardens use the Archdemon blood, only Bregan didn’t tell him about the sympathetic magic stuff with the Archdemon blood bc he didn’t understand it. Even with the resistance in the Warden blood he used, it would have been a high enough viral load to infect the dragon, even if he managed to do all other biohazard procedures properly, and lbr he probably actually didn’t. He probably used gloves and washed his equipment, but nothing would have been adequately sterilized.
> 
> The Korcari Wilds don't have it nearly so bad as the Western Approach, because the darkspawn were not as numerous and not there as long. There’s still spores everywhere though. You do not want to get a cut anywhere near the south central Korcari Wilds. Probably, most of the animals still there are nugs, which are fairly Blight-resistant.


	6. The Temple of Urthemiel: Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The (first) porn chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most of the kink tags you see on this fic? They're here. Yes, I am aware very little of this is humanly possible and much of the rest is "ow." Good thing they're darkspawn.

Alim was roused from the golden panoply of music by the Architect, who had returned and was watering the flowers.

“The sun is setting,” informed the Architect, setting down his water bucket. “If we leave as soon as night truly falls and make haste to the temple of Urthemiel, we can reach it before the moon reaches its zenith. We will leave the flowers here, but take our packs.”

“What of the tower?”

“Your idea has merit, but I wish to discuss it with the Augur. Come, now.”

Wordlessly, Alim gathered his things. Being a darkspawn had its advantages; no need for food or water, so all he needed was a spare robe and his field equipment. Just a blank book for notes and diagrams (and parchment was dear, but birch bark was too bulky for travel by far), ink and charcoal and pens, a compass of ancient dwarven make, a few other sadly ancient instruments, and a cobbled-together portable alchemy set. It was the work of ten minutes to pack them up, and he nodded at the Architect as soon as he had finished.

The fading twilight hurt his eyes, and he cursed, but within five minutes even that had dimmed, and he had gotten used to it. The Architect led this time, first south, then a little east, and after perhaps a little over three hours—count heartbeats, breaths, dragon measures, and the rising moon—they reached a low dome, deep in the Korcari Wilds. At first Alim saw no entrance, but then the Architect placed the palm of his hand on a large rune set in the wall, and a false wall illusion fell away, revealing stairs descending into the earth.

“I never came here as a mortal,” said the Architect, “nor after until this age, but I saw the drawings of this place, and the plans stored in the temple in Minrathous. This was the sacred spot, but the ground could not support the weight of the usual sort of temple, so they built it underground. I suppose it could have been built with a deep foundation, but the Magisterium was already complaining about shipping marble so far, the records said, and the new design was itself a praise of Urthemiel.”

They passed down a spiral stair, arriving at a great door at the base. Each half of the door was controlled by a great lever, still intact; the Architect did not pull them, but reached out with force magic, and silently the doors swung open, inwards. Alim started to enter; the Architect motioned him to stay back. Then he spoke.

“I enter your holy place, Urthemiel, being a foolish creature who cannot comprehend your beauty. Inspire me to become the architect of your works, for…” his voice faltered, “…in your memory.” He turned back to Alim. “Come.”

Moonlight fell through gaps in the ceiling of the ancient temple; broken stone lay scattered on mosaic floor tiles where it had fallen. But overall, the building was remarkably well preserved. In the center of the great dome was a skylight that was unmistakably intentional, above an ash-covered marble pyre.

The Architect, now at the pyre, had taken off his pack and was digging some things out of it. He placed something on the pyre and willed it into flame—charcoal, Alim realized, as the painfully bright flame died down to a dull glow—and then a bundle of herbs on top of the lit charcoal. The sweet scent of elfroot and blood lotus filled the air, and Alim suddenly and incongruously thought of Zevran; how he used to smoke blood lotus, sometimes, when he thought Alim wouldn’t smell it and lecture him about smoking causing consumption. Where was Zevran now? He would hear the Calling in a few years’ time, unless his old research team at Weisshaupt had made some great stride with the resistance factor so it would work longer. He should have asked the Augur about that, while he was there, he thought. He would save Zevran, if he came to the Deep Roads, and then the three of them would save the last Old Gods.

The Architect turned away from the pyre, and cast several spellwisps up towards the roof of the temple. The ceiling stood out in sharp relief, and the sculptures on its beams: the shape of a high dragon, but with a head like a drake, and a very prominent phallus.

“That is Urthemiel, before he was corrupted. A two-sexed dragon, as all the Old Gods are, and he was a god of beauty, public works, and fertility. I was his high priest, and I never came here, always too busy with politics and research in Minrathous, not wanting to travel to cold barbarian lands. Sometimes I wonder, if I had come here then, would I have failed him so badly.”

“There are two more. We can try again, and wait till the darkspawn are almost upon them anyway, so if we fail, at least the resulting Blight is what would have happened regardless.”

“It will not bring back Urthemiel. But perhaps our work will be one to his memory.” The Architect drew closer to Alim. “Even as now, you are in a sense one of my works.” He took Alim’s hand, and traced his own claws lightly over his palm and wrist, where even darkspawn skin is sensitive.

Alim had thought he had left desire with mortality. Normal darkspawn, after all, reproduce through broodmothers; they have vestigial genitalia, but didn’t seem to use them, except possibly in the conversion of broodmothers, and no one had ever given a credible account of that. But they had both been men once, hadn’t they? Perhaps it was not so strange. And as the Architect continued to trace over his pulse point, Alim felt himself begin to harden under his robes—it had been years since he had been touched so intimately—and realized that there were some things the Taint could not change.

“In here?” Alim asked—this was a temple, after all, even if Urthemiel was not his god.

“Yes. Some rites of Urthemiel were not dissimilar to this. And, thanks to us, Urthemiel himself is no longer here, and nothing we do in here could defile this place more than I did when I simply entered it to wake him. And—I do not desire very often, but here and now seems appropriate.”

Alim still had questions, but those were eclipsed by the rapidly growing need to get their robes off. Cloth sashes were at least easily untied; Alim also wore loose breeches under his robe, mimicking his habits from mortal life, but the Architect was bare. His cock had been scarred and pitted by the Blight, but was recognizably close to human, though noticeably larger than one would expect for a human that size, and also already half-hard. Alim finished kicking off his own boots and breeches, and knelt to suck it.

The Architect gasped, evidently not having expected Alim to do that—maybe it was one of those weird hangups Tevinter had—and Alim felt the cock in his mouth fatten perceptibly. So dying hadn’t made him lose his touch, then; just his gag reflex, apparently. And he was pretty sure his tongue had gotten longer, compared to when he’d last done this, and he was wondering how he’d missed noticing that, but then he remembered his teeth must have come in around the same time, and wow he really had to be careful to keep those out of the way. And now the Architect was fingering his ears, which felt really nice, and he moaned appreciatively and reached down to touch his own cock, which was definitely reacting the way cocks were supposed to, and better than it had for the last several years of his mortal life, at that. Why hadn’t he been told this was possible? Well, there wasn’t exactly a book on darkspawn sexual physiology, and even the Architect didn’t seem the sort to write one, but he himself was definitely a fool for not trying anything on himself. He just hadn’t thought of it, for some reason.

The Architect was trying to get his attention. “Alim, I need—can you please put a finger up my ass?”

Alim had to pull off of his cock to reply. “Um, claws, remember?” he said, waving the hand that wasn’t on his own cock.

“Yes, I can see that, and I also can see that you always file them down almost to the quick to make labwork and reading easier. Just bend the first joint; I’ll be fine. I know what I’m asking.”

His finger joints had changed as well, when his fingers had lengthened, and he could bend each joint of his fingers separately and until the inner sides of his fingers touched. This change he had noticed, but he’d never considered its sexual uses. Alim cast grease—one never forgets that spell—and began working a finger into the Architect’s ass, while continuing to suck his cock. He soon found the gland he was looking for, and within minutes he had him coming down his throat.

The Architect was still hard, even after that, but pulled out and sat down on the temple floor. “I think standing is not wise,” he said.

“Are you done? You don’t look like you’re done,” asked Alim, still working his fist over his own shaft.

“No. Not anywhere close,” replied the Architect a bit breathlessly, beginning to rub himself as well. “The reason I do not do this often is because once you are ‘at attention,’ it doesn’t go down, unless you get really tired of it or get distracted by something. Eventually you might lose enough fluids that you have to get water or something, but getting bored of sex usually happens first.”

“You might have told me this, when I first began to change.” He was panting now, arousal building.

“And risk you trying that level of exertion while the Taint was still busy changing you?” retorted the Architect.

“Do you actually know if it would cause any harm?”

“No, but I did not want to risk it, and I thought you would figure it out on your own anyway.”

“I should leave you with blue balls for that, but then I’d have to deal with this myself,” muttered Alim, rubbing his thighs together as he went down on all fours to crawl over to him.

Alim settled on the Architect’s lap, rubbing their cocks together. This time it was the Architect who summoned grease (some spells, it seemed, were as old as magic itself), and Alim moaned and thrust into the sudden slickness. He rocked into the Architect’s hand and against his cock, and worked his own filed thumb-claw against the slit, and soon he came all over them both—and the fluid was black in the light of the moon and the spellwisps.

“Is that normal?” asked Alim, slightly panicked.

“Yes, and before you get upset with me, until you asked I’d quite forgotten it was different for mortals.”

“It’s thinner than normal, too,” said Alim, rubbing the stuff between thumb and forefinger, and then licking it off. “I’m going to have to take samples. That is, when I don’t as urgently want to fuck my dick off, I want to take samples.”

For now, they stayed in the same position, both of them fucking the Architect’s hand, while Alim trailed electricity across his body. They got their second orgasms a little more synchronized, and then, after pausing for breath, the Architect asked Alim to fuck him. Everything that Alim had ever read in Tevene poetry and shitty romance novels suggested that this was the opposite of how such things were supposed to go, between an elf and a magister, but he had always known that such literature was highly performative. For sure in real life, the magic used was better—no, make that “possible.” Biting his lip in concentration, Alim cast grease again, this time inside the Architect, who moaned a little at the sensation, and then he readied himself and sank into the ancient magister’s ass.

Hooking one of the Architect’s legs over his shoulder, Alim began thrusting, digging his blunted claws into his back. The pressure around his cock was overwhelming, and within a few minutes he shuddered and came—and then  _ kept on going, _ fueled by the Taint that lived in every part of his body, slamming his hips forward to the eighth notes of the dragonsong, needing to fuck the Blight into everything he could touch, and right now, that was the Architect. He pounded on, nerves strained and sparking beyond anything mortal bodies are built for, until the knot of pressure at the base of his spine drew taut and snapped, and he came again. And this time, he buried his teeth in the flesh over the Architect’s collarbone, sharp spikes breaking through the skin like needles through linen, and the blood flowed into his mouth—the Architect’s blood, one of the seven original wellsprings of the Taint, no matter the number of reincarnations—and he swallowed the bitter, acid ichor hungrily, still at the same time spending his own ichor into the Architect’s body.

It seemed almost an eternity that he hung there, worrying the Architect’s shoulder for more blood in time with the little, convulsive thrusts of his hips as he chased the aftershocks of his orgasm, each movement like lightning through his groin. But eventually, he felt pressure at the hinge of his jaw, and his mouth was forced open and out of the magister’s chest, as the Architect slowly drew him back to reality.

“So it seems you do have some of the reproductive instincts of a common darkspawn,” remarked the Architect, gently but firmly holding the whimpering ghoul’s head away from him as he blindly attempted to bite again. Alim gradually quieted and stopped trying to maul the Architect, but still squirmed needily, rocking into him deliciously as he tried to finish wringing the pleasure out of himself, occasionally shuddering a little and releasing another feeble spurt of ichor. Seeing him returned to some amount of sensibility, the Architect went on. “Our frankly ridiculous potency is due to the Taint’s imperative to convert broodmothers. I find that particular process distasteful, but the Taint does not seem to know the difference between that and this. And so any carnal act involves expulsion of enough mass and fluids that we feel the need to replenish ourselves by consuming blood and flesh—most darkspawn prefer to do so beforehand. I can usually ignore it, but not you, yet, apparently. I had hoped you would be able to, but you are the first male ghoul I have had survive long enough to test that. You will drink water, at least, after this, and in the meantime we should reverse positions, so that some of my ichor will end up inside you, to offset what you have lost.”

With that, the Architect eased himself off of Alim’s cock, even as Alim whimpered and tried to thrust back in, driven by the all-consuming need of the Taint. He deftly maneuvered the elven ghoul onto his hands and knees, and began ardently licking him open.

A loud cry escaped Alim as the Architect’s tongue assaulted his entrance. The Architect was sparing not an iota of his indefatigable darkspawn strength as he thrust his tongue into that ring of muscle, but it was not enough, not nearly enough, and Alim desperately thrust his left hand underneath himself to strip his achingly sensitive cock as he scrabbled at the stained mosaic floor with his right, straining every muscle in his lower body just to keep his ass in the air. His cock pulsed with a wave of pleasure and shot another great spurt of ichor onto the floor, and he supposed that counted as coming again, but it hardly felt like coming; there was no real sense of release, and his need was if anything more urgent than it had been before. He rocked back, trying to fuck himself on the Architect’s tongue, and oh Maker that tongue was doing wonderful things inside his ass, but he needed more, he needed to be filled, he needed to be overloaded until the onslaught drowned out the burning ache in his loins and guts. And then he felt the rushing, twisting sensation of a grease spell being cast inside him, not as precisely or as gently as he himself would have done it, almost like a syringe full of oil being forcefully emptied inside him, but Alim was so eager for more stimulation that he moaned at the sudden if minute fullness, legs jerking with arousal as he desperately rubbed his chest against the mosaic floor, writhing in an attempt to get more touch, anywhere, everywhere. Then the Architect gripped him by the pelvic bones, claws almost piercing his skin, and drove his Blight-scarred length into him, and Alim let out a wordless quaver as the thick shaft sank home—finally, finally it was almost enough.

As if sensing his need to be touched and overwhelmed, one of the Architect’s unnaturally large hands moved up to Alim’s chest and oh-so-delicately ran the sharp edge of its claws over his peaked nipples, and the other shifted to the center of his abdomen to better support him. The sudden pressure made him gasp; he realized that his entire stomach was being compressed between the Architect’s hand and his massive, unrelenting cock. The thought was almost unbearably erotic, and moreover he had not known that the area under his navel was so sensitive. But now the whole of him seemed to spark like a cracked rune, every touch like fire or a silverite blade, from the tiniest caress of the Architect’s hands where they pressed his nipples or grazed his cock, to the press of the floor tiles into his knees, to the rough slam of the Architect’s body against his back, and of course, most of all, the sweet, burning, splitting thrusts of the Architect’s cock reaming his entrails.

The Architect’s rhythm faltered for a second, and he spilled hot and copiously into Alim (startling him—he had thought he was incapable of feeling temperature now, but apparently that was only the outside of his body), filling him in a way that was definitely not  _ enough  _ but did seem very much on the right track to ‘enough’ and sent renewed heat and pressure to his cock and balls; and then he resumed his thrusting at an even more merciless pace, lifting Alim off the floor and fucking him brutally onto his cock with as little effort as if he were a doll. The jarring against his hips and the scratches of the Architect’s nails down his chest and stomach were finally enough to push Alim over the next edge and his cock spurted into the air, painting the floor for feet around them with streaks of black ichor. Spurred on by the sight, the Architect flooded his bowels with ichor again, and Alim was lost, lost in the unremitting thrusts against his prostate, lost in the press of the Architect’s hands and body on him, lost in the sloshing fullness of ichor and oil inside him, lost in the pleasure wracking him and the never-quite-ceasing spasms in his groin. His cries and the Architect’s grunts and gasps almost drowned out even the Old Gods’ song, and the visage of Urthemiel loomed deaf and unseeing above them, as his blighted servant offered himself and his acolyte up to the dead and tainted god.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Architect's prayer to Urthemiel: “Intro sanctum tuum, O Urthemiel, stultum animal non possest perspicere tuam formam. Inspira me fiere architectum operum tuorum, ad [tuam gloriam aeternam]…in memoriam tuam.” Alim and the Architect actually mostly talk in Tevene. The Architect knows Trade, but mostly only what he’s read in books and half of that was actually Ancient Dwarven, so Tevene has fewer misunderstandings. Also, language of science and so on.
> 
> "Tevinter hangups": _Corypheus_ would never suck cock. Tbh, Corypheus wouldn’t go down on anything. He’s got some kind of insecurity complex. (Probably one of those "straight acting" dudes, tbh.) So, the Architect’s really not used to topping. He also probably expected a little more foreplay, but Alim has a bit of an oral fixation.
> 
> Alim's filed claws still extend nearly an inch past the tip of his finger, they’re just rounded and blunt. Any shorter and they’d be painful, and anything less than ¾ of an inch would just bleed everywhere. You still probably don’t want his nails being the first thing entering your ass. So, freaky darkspawn fingerjoints. Go big or go home.
> 
> Darkspawn "cum" is basically blood/ichor. Apart from being an in-joke about medieval concepts of physical sex, it’s got an actual purpose for darkspawn biology. If broodmothers are converted the way Hespith’s rhyme implies, it makes sense for male darkspawn genitalia to be basically virus delivery systems, which means black, blight-filled ichor.  
> And yeah, Alim completely forgets about the samples. He probably remembers the next time they have a sex marathon.
> 
> The biting the Architect bit: take that, O vampire-novel-author-who-shall-not-be-named-because-of-her-fleet-of-lawyers. And I do not own any of her works or characters and am referencing her in the context of a literary tradition and intertextuality, which is definitely fair use if it counts as use at all.


	7. The Temple of Urthemiel: Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sun comes up, so they have to stop fucking. Some serious discussions.

Alim roused from his pleasurable stupor to discover that there was suddenly nothing in his ass. He whined and tried to somehow rub his empty hole on the floor (which didn’t work, since his asscheeks were in the way), still so aroused that it made his stomach hurt. He gradually became aware that the Architect was trying to get his attention.

“It will soon be dawn. We do not want to be in this chamber, when that happens; there are too many holes in the ceiling for that to be comfortable. The lower floors of this temple should be safe.”

He was right, Alim realized. Gathering up his pack and discarded robes, he followed the Architect to a descending staircase hidden amongst the niches in the temple walls, walking with no small difficulty due to his still-persistent erection and increasingly sore ass.

They reached the bottom of the staircase and entered a hallway; then the Architect took a sharp turn and entered a room that seemed to have once been a dormitory, judging by the decrepit remains of furniture in it. The damp air of the Korcari Wilds was far from kind to wood or cloth, even if it kept stone from cracking. A fountain still ran, though, set into one of the walls, and the Architect drank from it, and told Alim to do so as well. Alim did, discovering that he was strangely thirsty, for the first time since he had awoken as a darkspawn.

By now his arousal had mostly faded. There was still a strange tension in his belly, a sign that his release had been not quite enough, but he recognized it from all the times since his Joining when he’d been too tired to get off more than once in a night (though the famed “Warden stamina” was only a shadow of what a truly Blighted being was capable of, as he was now awfully aware), and he knew it would eventually fade. The Architect, he saw, had already put his robes back on, and Alim did so as well.

“Are you sure you are all right?” the Architect asked. “If water is not enough, I can stand the sun long enough to hunt an animal for you.”

“No, I’ll manage. I’m not even sure I remember what hunger feels like, to be honest. Are you okay? I bit you.”

“Not badly. I do not believe I lost more than I would have from one more climax, anyway. And it is my fault for being remiss in telling you about your body and your instincts. Though, again, the only fully turned Warden ghoul I ever managed to keep alive for more than a few weeks was a dwarven woman, Utha, so there is much I too do not know.”

“What happened to the others?”

“Two, both humans, were slain in battle, at the Circle of Ferelden. You knew one of the humans involved in that incident. Others fell to accidents, or to my inability to properly control unawakened darkspawn. One went entirely feral and I had to kill him. A couple took their own lives, unable to bear the thought of immortality or feeling that living would betray their oaths as Wardens. And I do not come to all Wardens who go on their Callings, you understand, only those the Augur and I deem to have exceptional knowledge or ability, and I cannot save all of those even before they turn. In some, the Taint causes the body to destroy itself before it takes over enough to save it. I could save them, but I usually cannot get close enough to do so. Many would rather die than accept my help, or believe that I am a demon trying to possess them. Many are killed before I can reach them. Mages in particular are rare and hard to save; they are weak in single melee combat, usually, and if they are not, they are able to heal themselves where a mundane would have become incapacitated and capturable. And many of them choose to become possessed to kill as many darkspawn as possible, to have a quicker end, or immolate themselves when surrounded. You are actually the first one I was able to save, and I think I only managed to save you because you knew me, and you’ve survived this long largely because of the powers you have developed. You are also the first elf. So, there is much I do not know. I have been studying you, and it is enlightening. Perhaps with your abilities, if they get stronger, we will be able to turn more former Wardens successfully, but that may still take time.”

“Would you be willing to try to save Zevran Arainai?” There. It was out. And for all he knew, the Architect might think that Zevran must be eliminated to prevent competition, to protect their own chthonic relationship; for asking for such a favor for the husband from his mortal life while the Architect’s ichor was still leaking out of his ass.

“Who?” asked the Architect.

“My husband,” admitted Alim, painfully aware of the tenuousness of the situation. “You need not worry about my affections. Zevran and I always had an ‘open arrangement.’ But if I could save one, I would save him. Not to mention that, when I left him, he was the second-highest ranked Warden in Thedas, and he was in charge of my successors in research.”

“Is he a mage?”

“No, but he is a very good assassin and herbalist. When—if—his Calling comes, can we at least try?”

“We will try,” promised the Architect. “Even Utha gained some small power from the Void; perhaps he can be a longer-term subject. And I do care about keeping you happy. I make no guarantees about outcomes, and he may not wish to be saved, but we will try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually have no idea if arousal works that way for someone with a dick. Also, Architect/Utha was totally a thing.


	8. What Darkspawn Eat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unexpected battle, and its aftermath. The Architect is unused to managing melee opponents. Crossbows are nasty little weapons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTAINS GORE AND ANIMAL DEATH (and a good deal of people death), AS WELL AS SOME GENERAL GROSSNESS. If you're into that, you'll like this chapter, even though it's all for the sake of establishing lore and making some points about the Architect; if you're squicked/triggered, which I would not blame anyone for, skip to the endnotes, where things will be summed up less graphically.

Between Alim’s suggestion to use the Tower of Ishal and the need to replant the flowers, Alim and the Architect forwent most of the thaig exploration they had planned on the way back, and instead made all speed to the Augur. And perhaps it was this deviation from the plan, or perhaps it was the Augur’s blindness to untainted things, that caused what happened next.

That is, the two of them, alone, ran into a very large and apparently freshly-supplied company of the Legion of the Dead, who were encamped but hardly disarmed.

“Shit. Shit. Shit.” hissed Alim. “Can we try to sneak past them?”

“Obviously, we’re going to _try_ that,” said the Architect, though he was unslinging his staff as he spoke. “I dislike needless slaughter. But there really isn’t much cover, and they have fires to see by. We are carrying a great amount of white flowers, which will be visible, and we cannot just leave them.”

Holding their breaths as much as possible—darkspawn can survive several minutes without breathing, if they remain completely still, but they do have to breathe eventually, or if active—Alim and the Architect crept along the far edge of the cavern, hoping their robes would blend into the shadows. They were not in a thaig, here, but one of the larger causeways, large enough across to fit a small farm in, longways, if they’d been on the surface, but the Legion camp was taking up the greater part of its width, and the ancient road offered no cover. And they had gone that way because this part of the Deep Roads was in fairly good condition with little rubble or debris, Alim recalled with irony.

They made it nearly halfway across, but one of the scouts eventually spotted them, yelling that there was “a white blur”—their maker-damned flowers—moving across the far wall. Alim dropped his pack and cast a Void-infused barrier, falling into the support magic routine he’d drilled for decades. The Architect force-pushed the first wave back from them in a large sweep, and then used the time bought to begin to cast something large and intricate, some kind of large area spell, entropy from the motions Alim could see out of the corner of his eye. For now, he focused on holding off the rain of arrows, dropping the part of the barrier on their sides to concentrate on the front. And those arrows were landing out of time with the darkspawn song, and that was just annoying. But there didn’t seem to be any Wardens with this group, at least. That would have severely tested his resolve.

The Architect finally released his spell—Cloud of Death, apparently. Not the most effective battle spell, especially against dwarves, who were significantly more resistant to magic than just plain being on fire, but it did stop most of the arrows. Of course, the dwarves near the edges of the cloud simply ran out of it, putting them almost in melee range, and the Architect didn’t seem to be going for another force push. Grabbing his belt knife, Alim cut deep into his own arm, gathering enough power for a blood spell. At the right moment, he dropped the barrier and launched the tainted blood into the oncoming dwarves, simultaneously rupturing their veins and driving the Taint into their flesh. Then, front barrier again; he put some of the blood into it, to strengthen it and make it harm anything else that his blood had touched that tried to hit it, which at this point was a good many of the dwarves. The Architect finally decided to set things on fire, though with a version of the spell that Alim hadn’t ever seen before, with fiery chunks of something raining down from the air, which was still not much help at close range, though he could feel the heat through his shield.

“Force push them, for fuck’s sake! One of them’s trying to hit me with a hammer!” he yelled.

“You do it! I’m casting ‘confundere omnes,’ videsne?”

“I’m shit at force!”

Alim had no choice but to reduce the size of the shield on the Architect’s side and concentrate it over where several of the dwarves were trying to hammer him to death, having correctly identified him as the one casting it. The Architect released the confusion spell, which distracted the dwarves a bit, and then finally did another force push, sweeping the dwarves back into the path of the other spells. Alim finally was able to cast Chain Lightning, which had the benefit of being able to pick off individual enemies, and pretty soon it was a matter of controlling individual stragglers. Dwarf corpses lay everywhere, and it was a simple matter to use their blood to keep powering their own magic.

A crossbow ricochet rang out close by, but Alim paid no mind to it, only crushed the head of the dwarf who had shot it.  And…there seemed to be no others, now, as the Cloud of Death dissipated and the fire burned only normally flammable things. Alim dropped his barrier, and turned to the Architect.

He was kneeling on the stone floor, holding his side.

“What happened?” Alim asked in alarm.

“A very smart dwarf managed to bounce a bolt off the wall behind your barrier. Now, I need you to find something out there that’s still living, and bring it to me.”

“I can heal you,” said Alim, hands already glowing, green mixed with Blight darkness.

“No! Get me something to eat first. I have at best ten minutes before the Taint starts destroying my muscle mass to have enough spare flesh to heal this. If you heal me, you just make that worse. The dwarves had a bronto. Get me that, if it survived. Or I swear I will start eating the nearest half-dead dwarf while it’s still alive.”

Alim picked his way through the burning carnage, searching for living things that weren’t people. There! The bronto cart had been at the edge of the camp, and at the edge of the spells, and the dwarves had set up camp recently enough that the beast had not yet been unhitched. It had tried to run, but the cart had gotten turned over, and the bronto was burnt and had a broken leg, but it was alive. Alim healed it enough that it could stand, spelled it till it stopped trying to fight him, and led it back to the Architect. He was curled up on the ground, still bleeding ichor, though at a much slower rate than a human would bleed.  As he approached, the Architect lifted his head and spoke.

“Render it unconscious, and then cut its body open.” Alim led the thing next to the Architect, and then did so.

The Architect sat up, hissing in pain, and clawed open the slit in the bronto’s belly. Pulling out the liver, he bit into the steaming organ, ripping off chunks of flesh and swallowing them whole. Blood ran down his hands and chin, staining his robes, mixing with the ichor already on them. He ate about two-thirds of the liver, as Alim crouched there, watching, and then spoke.

“You should eat some, too. Save me the heart and the spleen, but I will not be able to eat all of this, and it is no good once it is more than a couple hours dead. Try the lungs and the brain; those still have plenty of blood in them.”

Alim decided to start with the sweetbreads, since the bronto was still slightly alive, and it seemed a good idea to keep it so as long as possible. It turned out that, other than having four stomachs, a bronto was not that differently arranged from a person, so he soon found what he was looking for. He was still a bit dubious about eating anything at all, since he hadn’t done so since he became a ghoul, but he raised the dripping meat to his mouth, and bit in.

The taste of fresh blood exploded on his tongue. Something woke within him, and he swallowed hastily and bit off more, driven to feed the Taint and convert the living flesh he swallowed to it. Before he knew it, he had finished the entire pancreas and was licking the blood off his fingers, before reaching in to find another organ. Yes, that was a kidney. It was also deliciously full of blood; the Taint seemed to think that any living flesh was good, but it seemed to like blood the best.

By now, the bronto itself had stopped breathing, though most of its flesh was not quite dead, or at least not dead enough for the Taint to care. The Architect was nearly finished with the spleen, and was pulling out the heart with one hand; Alim decided it was time to start on the lungs. He ought to have been full by now, if he were mortal, but strangely he wasn’t. Perhaps darkspawn stomachs worked differently. He was pretty sure, though he knew not how he knew, that he wasn’t actually digesting anything, but simply allowing the Taint to infect what he swallowed and incorporate it into his body. In any case, he kept chewing, swallowing the blood that came out of the flesh like juice out of an orange.

“You still have not tried the brain yet,” observed the Architect, noticing that Alim had almost finished the lungs.

“I’m not sure how to get the skull open, without driving bits of bone into the brain, and somehow I don’t think I’m supposed to eat those.”

“Here,” said the Architect, aiming a controlled force blast at the bronto’s head, which had an effect something like a hammer and chisel. “I’m sure you can pull it apart from there.” The skull was only partially split, and Alim wasn’t sure he could get it the rest of the way apart, but when he tried, he realized that he had underestimated his own darkspawn strength; that was happening less often these days, but he still did that every so often, or maybe the blood was simply giving him more power.

Alim split the halves of the brain, and offered one bleeding lobe to the Architect, who waved it away.

“I’ve had enough to repair the damage, I think. You should get the brain; it is good for newer darkspawn.”

“Are you sure?”

“All right, just a little bit.”

The Taint loved neural tissue, and apparently that counted when it ate it as well, for Alim felt the dark power within him surge. He ate the brain more slowly, savoring its flavor, sucking the blood out of it before he swallowed the flesh. He was starting to feel fuller, now, having eaten an amount of meat nearly the size of his abdomen, and he almost felt like, of all things, taking a nap. Or whatever a darkspawn would do instead of a nap.

The Architect seemed to have reached a similar state. “I almost want to start cracking the long bones for the marrow, but I think that would be too much effort.”

“How are you feeling?” asked Alim, licking the last of the blood off his fingers.

“Better. I will be able to walk in a few hours. It was a simple crossbow bolt to my lower stomach, so no bone needs repair, and I will heal quickly. The main danger was the amount of ichor lost, which was admittedly considerable, and my own body’s attempts to replace it.”

“The Taint, then, it takes one kind of flesh and turns it into another, as it has need?”

“So it seems. It prioritizes ichor and nerves and skin above muscle, sometimes to a dangerous degree. One can end up perfectly healed but too weak to move, if one does not eat.”

“I assume you found this out by experience?”

“Yes—fairly early on. One of us nearly became immobile before giving in to the urge to eat. Before, we thought that eating would turn us all into broodmothers, as happened to the Madman. It seems that that is only early-stage female ghouls. But enough. We should rest, and let the Taint work on what we have eaten.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Alim and the Architect run into a Legion squad on the way back to the Augur, and have to fight it, despite their best efforts. Alim's on shields and the Architect is supposed to be doing the offensive magic, but he's ignoring melee opponents and so Alim has to shrink the shield to avoid being bludgeoned, causing one of the Legion dwarves to be able to hit the Architect with a crossbow bolt ricocheted off the wall behind the shield. Darkspawn biology means that muscle tissue gets autocannibalized to heal wounds unless wounded darkspawn eat, so Alim brings the Architect the dwarves' bronto for him to eat alive (dead tissue is mostly useless to the Taint); he knocks it out with magic first. Alim eats some too, bc brontos are really big.
> 
> "Or I swear I will start eating the nearest half-dead dwarf while it’s still alive.”: The Architect is actually bleeding enough that reincarnation is a possibility. Sure, he’d come back, but it's not without its dangers. First, proximity. The nearest human ghoul might be a broodmother; the Architect really needs to be mobile. Alim can't care for both the Augur and the Architect like that easily. Or, the nearest human ghoul might be far enough away that his soul'd go into one of the half-dead dwarves Alim hit with his tainted blood spell, which could have adverse effects on magic or mass needed, or he could end up possessing Alim, which would ruin all the effort he’s put in over the last few years and deprive him of Alim’s skills and information. Or, the Dark Ritual might shunt the Architect’s soul into Kieran, and it would suck if the Architect teleported into the body of his own Old God, who currently happens to be the First Enchanter of the College of Montsimmard.  
> The other problem with reincarnation is the risk of it going wrong (memory loss or deformity). Even if things do go well, it's disorienting, confusing, and time-consuming. You avoid having to reincarnate.
> 
> Darkspawn bleeding slower than humans: I confess that my “physiology of the Blight” is highly influenced by Seanan McGuire’s Kellis-Amberlee zombie virus. Some of the symptoms of its amplification is inability to cry and fast blood clotting because the virus likes to conserve moisture. In DA, darkspawn are capable of eating, presumably to make up for mass and fluid loss, but the fast clotting is still reasonable, especially given the canon regenerative powers mentioned in The Calling.
> 
> Darkspawn converting swallowed living flesh to darkspawn flesh and assimilating it into their bodies: Full ghoulification changes the internal organs, turning most of the digestive system into a "holding area" for converting swallowed cells, then the liver and the rest of the digestive system diffuse them into the blood and carry them where they're needed to replace damaged cells in the body etc. Alim's eating bc he's lost a small amount of fluid and mass recently, bc blood spells and sex and breathing and all that; the Taint's been cannibalizing some of his “nonessential” internal organs. (The Taint still needs lungs, a circulatory system, that weird-ass "digestive system," and a urinary system as a last-ditch means of eliminating foreign toxins.) He likes blood best rn because it replaces fluids. He hasn’t lost any major chunks of his body, so the amount of cells in whole blood is plenty for physical regeneration.  
> Brain eating: the first thing the Taint does when you become a Warden is make your brain react to the presence of darkspawn. It’ll show up in your blood, but at very low levels, not enough to infect other people, until your immune system gives up and you hear the Calling, because that’s when it fully takes over your brain and then gradually goes on to the rest of you. Until then, it’s hanging out in your central nervous system and parasitizing your temporal lobes or something. The reason it’s darkspawn blood for the joining is that it’s easiest to drink blood, every cell of a darkspawn is either the Taint or colonized by the Taint, and also the original Wardens were likely attempting to blood-bind Dumat, perhaps via the blood of large numbers of people who were blood-bound to Dumat. The way that Grey Wardens are currently able to kill Archdemons is also blood binding the Archdemon soul to themselves, but fortunately it requires only one person to be killed instead of idk a few hundred.  
> Also, braaaaaaaaains.
> 
> "We thought that eating would turn us all into broodmothers, as happened to the Madman": A very early symptom of ghoulification is lack of appetite. But if injured, the Taint causes extreme hunger, and it's thought that physical trauma is part of the catalyst for becoming a broodmother instead of a normal ghoul, as well as hormonal status and reproductive ability. Perhaps this accounts for the violence of the conversion process, as well as the need to quickly increase the ghoul’s viral load.  
> “Early stage” = “still has hair, still can feel temperature.”


	9. Returns, Regrets, and Reaming of Asses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alim has some second thoughts about the darkspawn lifestyle, in the aftermath of the battle with the Legion. Sex is totally a valid coping method, if self-destruction is denied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They say "Write drunk, edit sober," but I'm not completely sober yet, so you're getting this minus much editing. Have fun. This chapter's like 5 weeks overdue. Thanks to people who commented and sent asks and reminded me that yes, they wanted to read this...thing.

Spiders, the Hurlock emissary, greeted them a few hundred feet away from the Augur’s cavern.

“You should not bring him in there,” he said, pointing at Alim. “She had her litter.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” asked Alim.

“You feel like a young darkspawn,” said Spiders.

“The remaining childer will think you are one of them and attack you, when they would know not to attack an adult darkspawn,” clarified the Architect. “It will take another few years till we can be sure you would be safe.” Addressing Spider, he asked, “Were any of them emissaries?”

“Yes, at least two. I am not sure if they will both live. There are some hitters in there too. Strong.”

“Good. Whichever survive, I will awaken them. Alim, stay out here, I need to talk to the Augur, brood or no. Or, actually, you and Spiders take these packs to the laboratory.”

Alim and Spiders were left standing in awkward silence.

“Well, lab it is then,” said Alim, after several seconds.

It was not so much that Spiders was not a decent person, as that he didn’t really know how persons were supposed to behave, which was really not his fault. It didn’t help, though, that he had an intense fascination with spiders, hence his name, and would, when bored, summon large numbers of tiny blight spiders from the void and set them loose around him, with no consideration for such things as “this is supposed to be a laboratory and at least semi-clean” or “those things eat our research notes and drown in the ink” or “Please, I, Alim Surana, personally dislike the things, and I think one of them just went up my fucking robe ow shit it’s biting me please tell me you can banish them shit dispelling them is not fucking working.” Spiders had not been allowed in the lab for longer than a few minutes in years, and Alim still had to resist the urge to hiss every time he saw him. And Spiders was still upset about his demotion from lab assistant, and felt like Alim had just come in and replaced him. The Architect trained them together, but even so, they rarely spoke.

“These smell terrible,” complained Spiders, hefting the Architect’s pack of flowers.

“They’re supposed to. It’s for Joining nugs, to make blood to Awaken other darkspawn.”

“Nug Wardens???”

“Sort of. They won’t be fighting anything. Just for blood.” They had reached the door to the laboratory. “Now, no summoning, and set the pack down gently.”

“One time!”

Alim was trying to check on his Blight cultures and weird-Blight-resistant-deep-roads-mold cultures, but Spiders kept following him around and asking questions about Ostagar and their journey and the battle they’d had, like some combination of a cat and a very young apprentice. Alim couldn’t blame him for being curious; Spiders had been spawned years after the Fifth Blight and had been Awakened fairly young and had probably never gone more than twenty miles from the Augur’s current incarnation, but dammit, this was not the time. And if he got visibly annoyed, Spiders would be sneaking blight tarantulas under the lab door for weeks. It took the better part of half an hour to come up with some pretext to send Spiders back to the Augur and the Architect, and then Alim flopped down on his pillow-covered bronto hide with a book of Ancient Dwarven poetry to try to distract himself from the urge to claw at the walls.

 

Eventually the Architect returned.

“How went that conversation? And what about the baby darkspawn?”

“The Augur is rather put out that I did not take one of the genlocks with us. I suppose I should practice melee magic. You have to understand, this was not the sort of thing any of us in the Imperium were trained for.”

“Tell me about it,” muttered Alim, still in a sulk. He was, at this moment, inclined to think that it was a bit hypocritical to complain about living as a darkspawn when one had, effectively, chosen it by showing off with flashy magic to top off a life of luxury, when he’d grown up in a prison and come to this state of affairs by trying to avoid a worse one. Plus, the Architect had had a few thousand years to learn how to fight in an extracurricular manner, if he’d wanted to.

“I have always had someone else to handle melee, you understand. But I was worried for the Augur’s safety, and you knew shields.”

“They’re not impenetrable, you know. And those were technically barriers, which means they could be knocked into me, if hit hard enough. They’re for arrows, not hammers, and if they’re made to deflect hammers, they’re less good for avoiding arrows.”

“Still, I had thought you could handle it.”

“I could. And your death cloud did help, though a less intensive shadow spell plus an actual force sweep plus elemental magic would be more effective and drain less mana. I’ve written monographs on this.”

“My methods worked. Your shields, less so. I must confess, one would think battle techniques had advanced in the last thousand years, including the durability of shields.”

“Well, maybe if someone hadn’t broken into the Fade and brought the Blight out of it and made everyone south of the Imperium think mages were evil and had to be locked up and taught only approved techniques and never really experiment or have good equipment, they might have.” The air began to almost prickle, a sign that he was becoming far too angry, that his magic was becoming far too angry, but Alim did not care. “We had to kill people, who were fighting the Blight, because we are the Blight. Not unawakened darkspawn or deepstalkers, the Legion, and of course they’re legally dead, same as we are in fact, but they’re not _dead_ dead, and I swore an oath to help them, and to die before I became _this_. I’m a fucking danger to anything that’s actually alive. Save the old gods if you like; you have my notes. I’m going to find the nearest darkspawn nest, set myself on fire, and jump into it.” He rose and began to gather his things.

“Alim, be calm.” The words were laced with magic command.

“Don’t _compel_ me,” shrieked Alim, lashing out with something between a dispell and a smite. The Architect staggered back a little, grabbing the desk even, but quickly recovered. He grabbed Alim by the arm, and shoved him back against the stone wall.

“Your notes are not enough. I need your insights, your knowledge of modern magic, equipment, and customs. And I need you as a subject. I have lost too many. Now be sensible, and get over this attachment to mortality and mortals. You are not one.”

Alim responded by punching him in the face. The Architect yelped, but only force-pushed Alim across the room and onto the floor in his anger. Alim started to get up, reaching for his staff, but the Architect was on him, cracking his head into stone again, claws biting into his shoulders.

“What do I have to do to make you see this, that what we do is more important?” he hissed, ichor dripping from his bitten tongue onto Alim’s face. “You owe mortals nothing. You have all eternity, and you would throw it away for an oath you made in another life? You already died, when I found you, when you went into the Deep Roads with the Legion. You are the Blight now, and there is no peace with mortals. I thought there could be once; I was wrong. So what, I ask, do I have to do to teach you that you are not one and should live? To stop this foolishness?”

“Fuck it out of me?” quipped Alim.

It was a rather unfortunate quirk of Alim’s mental processes that a certain sort of physical danger quite often translated into intense arousal. Being grabbed had been enough to start it; by about halfway through the Architect’s last speech, he had fully submitted and was so hard he thought he might spurt all over the inside of his robes. He still hated the Blight, the mass slaughter of the Legion, and the Architect for making him be part of all of it, but foremost he wanted, needed to be fucked until it hurt to come any more.

Above him, the Architect sat up and loosened his grip, shocked into silence. “Are you _joking_?” he asked at long last.

“Not really. See for yourself. It would at least keep me too busy to off myself for a number of hours.” It had worked in the past. Zevran had been willing to do that, for him. Zevran, whom he hoped would be blessed enough to die mortal, of old age, in a bed, hopefully wrapped around an attractive young prostitute or three, and that was an image that, minus the dying of old age part, was really not helping the situation under his robes. It was Zevran he wanted now, really; yet, the Architect as well. He ought to be repulsed by the misshapen head and the grotesque claws, but their very abomination of nature only sent more heat to his groin, a sure sign of how corrupted he himself had become. And now, aroused almost beyond the point of bearing it, he tried to thrust up against the Architect, but his hips met air, for the Architect was sitting squarely on his chest.

“You are…aroused by this,” said the Architect, pondering—Alim’s movement had been impossible to mistake. “It is almost enough to make me wonder if what the Appraiser used to say was right, about elves and servility.”

“Less elves, more templars. And say that again and I will not worry about hurting you if I set myself on fire, much good that would do though.”

The Architect eased himself off Alim’s chest, into a crouch, still holding him down with one gigantic, spidery hand. With the other, he began groping him through his robe, as if merely to confirm Alim’s arousal.

Alim had thought he was close, before, but now that he was actually being touched, he realized that he was not anywhere near climax, simply very desperately aroused. As the Architect’s long, strong fingers caressed and squeezed him, first through his robe, then slipping under it and pressing bare flesh, he felt the first suggestion of the internal heat and pressure of orgasm building—and wasn’t it odd, that arousal still seemed like heat, of a sort, when real heat was something he could not feel there. Nowhere external, anyway, though he could inside himself, for some reason, perhaps to tell if meat was alive enough, when he ate it. Perhaps he could feel temperature again, true warmth again, if the Architect put a heated sound inside him…. And with that idea, it did not take long before his first climax took him, a little one, just a small and partial release of pressure in his groin and a few weak squirts of fluid in the Architect’s hand.

By this point, the Architect seemed to have finally become aroused. Breathing heavily—purely a manifestation of desire, it was not as if he needed the extra air—he shifted his focus from Alim’s somewhat oversensitive cock and down to his neglected hole, still pressing him down into the floor, even now. Alim gasped as he felt first oil flooding his depths and then the press of the Architect’s unnaturally bent knuckle, razor edges of the deadly claw curled just a twitch away from the sensitive flesh of his rectum.

Another knuckle followed, scissoring and stretching; Alim keened as the bony ridges of fingers pressed roughly into the sensitive gland behind his cock. Too much, too much, too soon, and yet he tried to fuck himself harder onto those eldritch fingers, stymied by the grip upon his chest. Frustrated and immobile, he settled instead for thrashing with his legs for what little movement of his arse that provided, spasmodically jerking sideways in and out, as if making snow clerics.

The Architect was now pulling aside his own robes; Alim felt more oil—he himself was too far gone to remember to summon it—and then that inhumanly, contranaturally large shaft was splitting him open. Maker! Had the magister been anything like that size, in life, or was it the warping of the Fade and the Blight, a mocking gift from Urthemiel? He was less prepared, right now, than he had been in the temple of that god, a few weeks ago, or perhaps simply less drunk, yet, on eros and the call of the Blight’s need to spread its own contagion. It hurt, it hurt every inch, and Alim welcomed it, crying out in mingled pain and need as the Architect settled to the hilt inside him, wrenching his legs apart and throwing one of them over his shoulder.

The Architect began to thrust; Alim felt more pain in his ass, despite all the oil, as the massive cock within him shifted his innards, and then a different pain, as his head banged against the stone wall. Uttering a curse that finished as a moan, Alim braced one arm against the wall, gripping the back of the Architect’s neck with the other. Had they been mortals, he would have gone for hair, not the neck, but darkspawn, even converted ghouls, had none. And that was just one more reason why he should be truly dead, but between the pleasure and pain of his filled ass, and the unrelenting frenzy the Blight forces on aroused darkspawn, he could hardly find it himself to care. Out with conscience, in with cock; and had he been able to think, at all, past the need to take pleasure and gasp and moan and scream his appreciation of it till the cavern echoed, he would have laughed at that.

 

A voice outside the door derailed him just before he would have reached his second peak.

“Architect? You okay? You sound like you’re being attacked!”

“Spiders, no! Stay out. Go somewhere else. We’re…” Alim fumbled for an excuse, “…testing the effects of the Taint on my voice. By yelling.”

“Can I watch?” asked Spiders excitedly.

“NO,” replied the Architect and Alim in unison.

“But I wanna see!”

“NO.”

  
“Maker,” groaned Alim, when the sound of Spiders’ shuffling footsteps had faded.

“Obliti filium putidae moechae raptent,” snarled the Architect, driving into Alim again.

“That’s—ah!—hardly fair to broodmothers; they didn’t want it,” Alim pointed out, before thrusting back against the Architect with a purr of relief.

“It’s an expression,” huffed the Architect, before he pulled out halfway and slammed back in, grinding his hips in little circles once he was fully buried in Alim’s ass. The interruption had barely managed to dampen their passion, such is the way with Blighted creatures, and instead the delay had only intensified the actual climax. Within minutes, the Architect arched and stretched and released a copious jet of ichor into Alim’s bowels, filling him even fuller than his inhuman cock already had. Moments later, Alim shook and spasmed and spurted jism so far it hit the Architect’s face, where, even as he thrust on, it dripped in rivulets down to his chest, black liquid on grey skin, across features still fine despite the warpings of the Blight, or even, to Alim’s Taint-ridden mind, because of it.

 

Perhaps three days later, they were finally exhausted enough to be done. They had had no need to stop to hide from the sun, and the bronto they had eaten the week before had more than made up for the fluid lost. They were both sore and raw and bruised and utterly, completely spent, but none of the sort of biting Alim had done in the temple of Urthemiel had occurred. Nearly the entire laboratory was streaked with ichor—Alim had had the presence of mind to cover his cultures and shut away the books and notes, before the Architect had fucked him over the desk, but everything else was a mess—and the floor ran with tacky puddles, but cleaning could wait for later. For now, Alim and the Architect rested, sprawled over each other, in as close a state to dreams and true sleep as darkspawn can ever get. Bright-scaled dragons seemed to circle above Alim’s head, singing “Free us. Save us. Serve us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why the fuck am I so obsessed with jizz, holy shit.
> 
> Oh, and the Architect's cussing in Latin means, roughly, "Forgotten Ones take that son of a stinking whore." I don't even remember if ancient Tevinter's supposed to have any concept of the Forgotten Ones. I also don't give a fuck, at the moment. Not like this dude would be swearing by the Dread Wolf, the Blight, or the devil, anyway. Also, speaking of the Blight and Latin, the Latin word for it is "Lues." (According to Cassell's, at least.) That's two syllables, loo-ays, stress on the first. Thought some of you might find that useful.


	10. Departure/Arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A certain someone goes to the Deep Roads. Unbeknownst to him, his arrival is eagerly expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starting next week, I'm going to try to update on Tuesdays. I've got approximately a 2-chapter buffer, to allow for weeks where I only have one day off, and so on. Also, a new tag has been added. "Eldritch Apotheosis" is totally a kink.
> 
> Edit 10/14/17, because the character in question came back and I realized this could be an issue: "Der Feuer" means "the fire" in German, or in this universe, Fellsprache (which people speak in the Anderfels). Notice it's spelled quite differently from "Fuhrer." Don't get your panties in a twist. (It's Walder's nickname because his primary element is fire, and because he was a hot-headed little shit about 35 years ago. He credits Surana with preventing him from becoming a rage abomination.)

Much was still unknown about the Blight Resistance Factor, but after Alim Surana had gone on his calling a decade before, his successor and former apprentice Walder “der Feuer” Klein had shifted BRF research away from “finding non-injection delivery mechanisms” and towards “refining the working injectable factor into something goddamn usable to people who aren’t masochistic blood mages and don’t like having daily baths of oatmeal and elfroot”—in his own words to High Constable Arainai, when questioned on the subject, a few weeks after Surana’s departure. Der Feuer was much younger than Arainai, or the departed Surana, but he was still old enough to remember the pre-Rebellion Templars, and they had not seemed to mind injecting lyrium on a daily basis. Lyrium was also highly addictive, and the resistance factor wasn’t, but lyrium also didn’t make one _itchy_ —all the side effects were long-term, for most Templars he had known. He also was fairly certain that getting rid of the world’s deadliest earworm counted as incentive.

Within five years, he had produced a fairly usable compound—moving away from nugs, the usual standard research animal (inspired by the sudden development of food allergies in multiple subjects), had helped tremendously with the side effects, and individually tailored and periodically re-cultured formulae seemed to overcome the resistance failure problem, though of course they wouldn’t really be sure for a couple decades yet—so it came as a surprise to everyone, and most especially him, when the High Constable went off his shots after only six months of them.

Once Walder had given it two seconds of thought, he was less surprised, though quite angry he had not seen it earlier, and knew it had nothing to do with the drug itself. Arainai, who had never wanted to become a Warden in the first place, was tired of it and everything, and since Surana had left, he had been looking for a way out. And one cannot simply stop being a Warden, while alive. He had used the extra time to pick a successor and try to set a good example for other Wardens who presumably did want to live to become too old to fight, and now nothing short of actual imprisonment (which no one was willing to do) would keep him from the same Deep Roads Alim had died in. His protégé (not Der Feuer, who preferred to stay in research) was confirmed by the First Warden without much ado, and then he packed up (just some clothes, spare weapons, and a few little trinkets), said his goodbyes to the Wardens and locals, said a few more goodbyes to old acquaintances in Orlais as he traveled to Orzammar, and then passed out of reach of anyone still legally alive.

Many Wardens whispered that they were better off with a human as High Constable—yes, the new one was a knight-enchanter who fought like a rogue, but mages were much more accepted in Warden leadership than elves, still; being a Warden was the third most popular career for mages, in the wake of the Rebellion, and even before, Hossberg Circle had practically funneled young healers and arcanists and elementalists into Weisshaupt. Those Wardens who had been around longer (and were less racist) whispered other things: How few in the established leadership Arainai had been able to trust, when he and Surana had seized power; how Surana and most of his other allies who were close to his age had been Joined years before he had and had been Called accordingly; how after Surana’s Calling but also in little degrees after the others, Arainai had grown colder and quicker to draw his daggers, more willing to play high stakes with strategies and bypass safeguards; how visiting his office had become more and more of a frightening gauntlet, both physically (there were fairly believable reports of boobytraps) and verbally. Arainai had hated the whole organization he had been conscripted into—it was glaringly obvious, in retrospect, and, if the even quieter whispers about his Joining were true, who could blame him—and had only kept at it out of fear of what someone else might do in his position, and for the memory of a dead man.

 

Thus above. Below, in the Deep Roads, the Augur sent an urgent message to the Augur and Alim, where they worked in the lowest reaches of the Tower of Ishal, saying that she had seen through the eyes of dying darkspawn an elf who might be Zevran Arainai.

“Well, where the fuck is he?” exploded Alim at the hapless genlock in front of him.

“The Augur said he was near Bownammar, but that was a few days ago. He was with a company of the Legion, if that helps.”

This genlock’s Tevene was really quite good. The Augur must have been talking to her bodyguards a lot; Alim really needed to step that up with Spiders and Felix, their swordsman. (Swordsperson. Swordshurlock. He knew the combinable words in six languages, and none of them quite solved the problem.) Though, Alim supposed it was possible that someone had simply dropped the two hurlocks on their heads as childer.

“Obviously, we should go see the Augur without delay,” put in the Architect, calmly, with that tone of certainty which says one cannot even dream of not having the last say in the matter. “We will find him; I do not go back on my word. Though I doubt he will be easy to subdue.”

“We just have to lure him onto a sleep glyph, while preventing darkspawn from setting it off and alerting him, and from killing him while he’s passed out. It should be doable, if we key it right.”

“Have you got anything of his, some keepsake you took with you?”

“I am aware of the basic principle of sympathetic magic. It’s not like I spent my entire adult life refining it. And…no, it would be more of a link to me than him, by now.”

“Might it still be worth trying?”

“Likely no. It’s my earring.” Alim cocked his head to one side, glinting wisplight off the jeweled wire he still wore in his right ear, even after death and so much time.

“Yes…his essence would have been replaced by yours, after so long a time in direct contact. It is less sure, but we could try a direct hit with magic.”

“No paralysis spells. He hates those. Your sleep spells are probably better.” Alim paused for a moment, thinking. “You put a sleep spell on him. As soon as it takes, I put him in a shield bubble, so the darkspawn can’t kill him. Then, you cast greater paralysis or sleep on the darkspawn around him, and any surviving Legion members, or activate a glyph—it won’t get Zevran through the shield bubble.”

The Architect opened his mouth to say something; Alim cut him off. “No, I can’t sing that many darkspawn at once, not the numbers I would expect him to be fighting, and I can’t sing the Legion at all. It is also not the situation where I would like to try that. We use what we know to work. However, I _can_ influence the darkspawn towards a place we want them to be, and then Zevran will sense them. He might also sense me—though he won’t recognize me, he isn’t a mage, and besides I’ve changed so much…but if anything, that will just make him more interested in our trap.”

“I must say I feel like I am doing most of the work here.”

“You’re better at entropy, and I’m better at shields. Anyway, I’ve got the difficult bit with timing.”

“If you say,” replied the Architect, dismissively waving his hand. “Now, we do have things to pack.”

 

Zevran leaned against the tunnel wall, breathing heavily as he stared ahead into blackness. He’d been much younger, the last time he’d done this sort of thing, and his left wrist was being pretty vehement about that fact. He’d had good healers, for sure, and he was a Warden, but sixty-six was apparently too old to stab an ogre in the spine with your off hand, and then use it as a pivot to fling yourself across the room and stab something else in the throat. And that was why he was here, now. It was bad enough to be too old to be pretty; it was even worse to be too old to fight. All men die, and Zevran wanted his death to be quick, and fair, and, apparently, to involve stabbing darkspawn.

Whatever the darkspawn were doing, a few miles away in the lightless tunnels, it was something unusual. He could hear it, in a strange way that bypassed his eardrums, but it was odd, for blightsong—clumsy, almost, though that was an odd word. And this particular…singer seemed to be right there, the next thaig over, though he knew for a fact that the last two Old God locations weren’t anywhere near here. Maybe it was just a broodmother. He hadn’t actually been near one, since his Joining. Alim had never mentioned them sounding odd, but broodmothers were rare, and he himself had not seen one, either, since the mess with Amaranthine, and he hadn’t been a Warden very long, then. It took a few years to really be able to feel the nuances.

Still, the song pulled at him, tugging the darkness in his veins even more with its imperfection. He could feel that, now. It was a sort of uneasy restlessness, that told him to keep going, to stab deeper, to go forward and _seek_ …something. If Alim had been able to feel that, or some of it, with his magic, since the Fifth Blight, that really did explain a lot.

“Any more of them?” asked Sigurrya, a female dwarf, one of the five Legion members still left with him. She was limping a bit, he noticed, leaning on her glaive. Hopefully nothing too serious—he had been hoping to make it to the next checkpoint, before they lost anyone else.

“Not here. A bunch a few miles away. They seem to be…doing something. I’m not sure what.” For about the millionth time in the last ten years, he wished he could ask Alim about it. Alim had understood all the magic things. He had picked up a good deal of the theory, living with the man for thirty years, but then, a blind man could memorize the labels on a color wheel.

“Food, and then we’ll go find out?”

That sounded like a marvelous idea, and Zevran said so. Nug jerky and bag rolls could make anything better, down here. An hour’s rest, and they were ready to go on, again. His wrist still hurt, but between food and that odd song, it felt unimportant.

There were a lot of darkspawn in that next thaig, it turned out, though he could not find what was doing that singing, but for now he had to stab a lot of things. Trying to avoid any more strains or sprains, he darted here and there on the oddly cracked floor—it seemed almost like a pattern, somehow, he wanted to take a look at that after this battle, oop here came another Hurlock, but it was leaving an opening, and then he could probably dodge through as it fell, rolling would work better but he could already feel his ribs and spine protesting that—and then something that was definitely magic hit him, and he had just enough time to think “Shit, I did not feel an emissary out there,” before he…woke up. In a bed. That was in a cage. All his daggers were gone, even the last-defense shiv he kept in his loincloth (and that was pretty alarming, no one alive knew he carried that and generally no one wanted to search an old man’s junk), and some palpably Blighted creature who was _definitely not a normal darkspawn_ was _sitting at a table_ right outside his cell.

And then it turned, apparently having heard him rustling around, and said in a hauntingly familiar voice, “Hello, Zevran.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Der Feuer": “The Fire.” Very powerful elementalist, with a temper to match. Escaped the Rite of Tranquility due to the Rebellion. He came to Alim’s attention during his first year at Weisshaupt, and shaped up into quite a fine researcher, once he learned to stop setting things on fire every time he had a panic attack. He doesn’t look like Anders, but anyone who’s known them both finds them uncannily similar. (Admittedly, that's only three people: Alim, Zevran, and Nathaniel Howe.)
> 
> "Food allergies": Because immune response to nug proteins in poorly-purified antibody serum. How come Alim can eat cooked nug meat in previous chapters? (Apart from me not wanting to go back and edit.) Well, probably, he was having such bad reactions to the serum that he simply didn't notice, because it didn't ever get to the point where he couldn't breathe.
> 
> “No paralysis spells. He hates those.": I'm writing this series out of order, but this is connected to Zevran's Joining. As implied above, it was not willing. (And no, Alim didn't know till later, when he found him still unconscious from it. He has principles.)


	11. To See through Mortal Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zevran realizes who his captor is. Debates on ethics and the nature of reality.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zevran's POV. Content warning for minor self-harm as a response to conceptual overload.

There are some things the mortal mind does not easily comprehend. This is probably a protective factor. In any case, Zevran only realized the situation in bits of its whole.

The creature before him seemed about his height, but a bit stooped, and its ears were large and triangular. One seemed to be pierced, but Zevran could not see clearly in the gloom, beyond that that was indeed metal and not some tumor or other deformity. Its grey face was mottled, some parts darker than others, and its corpse-like lips were drawn back to expose rows of black, spiky teeth. After a moment, Zevran realized that this was probably supposed to be a smile, but why exactly this creature was happy to see him was something he really did not want to think about. Its hands were elongated, with short claws that seemed oddly blunt—not that this discounted fists, or magic, or normal weapons.

“What are you?” asked Zevran, still puzzling over where he knew that voice from. Maybe if he heard more of it, he could place it. “Something like the Architect, or Corypheus? A darkspawn they turned? Do you know any of what I am talking about?”

The creature’s smile closed, and seemed almost wistful—and that, too, was something Zevran thought he should know, without knowing why. “Something like that,” it replied. “I suppose it was too much to hope you would recognize me, after all this time, even if it does hurt. I wouldn’t recognize me, either.”

The spellwisp lighting the room brightened, and the creature drew it in front of its face and approached Zevran’s cage, squinting. “There are some things the blight has not taken from me. Look.”

Having nothing better to do, Zevran obeyed. That looked like… “How the fuck did a darkspawn get vallaslin?” he asked.

“I wasn’t _always_ a darkspawn,” said the creature, starting to sound a bit peeved. That was bad. Angry emissaries were generally bad. “Really, I thought you’d have realized by now. Please tell me you didn’t manage to addle yourself, after I left.” It shook its head slightly, earring glinting.

_‘After I left.’_ The voice, the meaning in that phrase, the _Dirthamen_ vallaslin, the extra mark on the left jawbone, that fucking _earring_ —it all crashed down on Zevran at once, and he stumbled back and sank to his knees on the makeshift bed, hyperventilating, heart pounding, wondering if this was how he died, from the shock of possibility.

“Alim,” he said, simply, when the roaring in his ears had died down enough that he could speak again.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” asked Zevran, finally looking up at him. “Why make me guess?”

“Would you have believed me?”

“No. And I still don’t,” said Zevran, suddenly scrambling to his feet and frantically searching for a way out. There was none; so despite the bars between them, Zevran dropped into a basic unarmed fighting stance at the back of his cell. “He died. He went on his Calling. You’re some demon or something who took his body, or called up his shape to trick me. You’re not real.”

“If I were a demon, I think I’d look more like I did ten years ago.”

“If you were a desire demon. You’re probably, like, fear or despair or something.” Not that he really knew, other than what Alim had once said, decades before. The real Alim. Panic hammered at him, too much to stand still, even in a fighting pose. Zevran began systematically shaking each bar in his cell, hoping one was loose. Not-Alim watched him impassively, probably having checked all of them beforehand. “Yes, yes, you probably didn’t leave any loose ones, since you know who I am. I’d be an idiot not to try, though.”

“You know Despair wouldn’t confront you with your dead lover,” said Alim at length. “Fear wouldn’t have either, before just now, probably. Me being me is much more likely. Remember Avernus?”

“He wasn’t…you. I don’t think the species difference could explain…you.”

“Or Fiona’s debrief?”

“That’s… _Creador_. That was the Architect, doing…things. He’s dead. You’re dead. No one ever confirmed that’s just what happens. That can’t…you can’t….” A fresh look of horror crossed his face. “I can’t….” Reaching the end of his mental endurance, Zevran lifted his hand to his mouth and bit till he tasted blood. Even that didn’t really help. He sat down on the bed again, rocking back and forth. His hand was still bleeding.

“It’s really not that bad,” said the Alim of dubious authenticity. “It’s just the Taint catching up to you, finally. You get feverish for a few days, then you pass out, then you wake up like this. Mostly like this. The teeth, claws, and bones take a bit longer. I wouldn’t call it pleasant, precisely, but definitely less awful than the time the Orlesians poisoned that dinner with orichalcum.” For someone who couldn’t possibly be Alim, he did seem to have a lot of the same memories.

“How—assuming you’re not lying, how long do I have?”

Possibly-Alim made a face, and the air in the room seemed to change. Zevran felt the corruption in his veins wake for a moment, reaching out towards something, and then die down to its usual ignorable hum. He supposed that was not actually inconsistent with the real Alim’s old diagnostic skills. He had to give this creature credit. His hand had been healed, too.

“Perhaps six weeks till you change, unless accelerated,” the creature said at last. “We caught you early, to make sure you survived. The Architect didn’t manage to catch me until I was on the brink of it—more like, he didn’t dare. You, we managed with quick spell timing and some crayon-du-chant.”

Brasca. That entire thing had been a glyph? And—aha! He’d finally caught the creature in a lie. “The Architect is here?” he asked, keeping his face carefully blank.

“Yes—well, not _here_ here, but a few rooms over. We thought it would be best if it was just me here, when you woke up.”

Zevran laughed, short and bitter. “You’re not him. The Architect is dead. He killed him.”

“He’s like Corypheus, Zev. He came back.”

Maker, it had an answer for everything. That was actually fairly plausible. “If he’s actually alive, bring him here.”

“You never actually saw the Architect in the first place! You were in Antiva. Wrote me some lovely letters. You wouldn’t know if he was the original or not.”

This was going nowhere. “Why do you want me here?” asked Zevran—that was the heart of the matter, if this creature didn’t want to kill him.

“We want you. Especially I do. You realize that with the Blight, we can theoretically live forever? But the Wardens decide to die, instead, when we could grow in the Blight and understand so much. We could save the last Old Gods. We could learn the reaches of the Void.”

“By becoming a corrupted monster. That’s why the Calling exists. That’s why you worked on the resistance factor—the real you,” Zevran hastily corrected himself. “We’re supposed to fight the Blight, not become it.”

“And we fight it by becoming it. Might as well be honest about it. Death or undeath—either way, we lose our mortality. Only the latter allows us to do anything of use. Once you change, I think you will understand more of this. Until then, the question is, will you work with us cooperatively, or do we have to keep you in this cell?”

“So is this for my knowledge or my body, then?” asked Zevran—that was the logical question.

Alim (not-Alim) laughed in reply, and that was terrifying, much more than his speaking voice; the timing and cadence was right, but there was something dreadfully off about the overtones. “Oh, Zevran. I won’t compel you to give up either, but I would hope both.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Orlesians poisoning a dinner with orichalcum: A thing I haven't written yet, from the Inquisition era. As one might gather, it was designed to cause scandal, not (immediate) deaths, but whatever third-rate noble did it fucked it up, and things got...interesting.
> 
> "Crayon-du-chant": Fereldan corruption of “crayon d’enchantement,” an Orlesian term for a chalk-like stick of pigment (usually charcoal, soot, or chalk), gum or pitch, and refined lyrium, used for drawing long-lasting glyphs or temporary runes. From Tevene “baculum (magifigurae/incantationis),” via translation. More permanent or durable installations of the size of the one used to catch Zevran are usually done with a mixture of lyrium and melted lead (sometimes also mixed with human or elven blood), although the practice is rare outside Tevinter. Alim, having received his primary magical education in Ferelden, would use "crayon-du-chant" as his primary word for the concept, when speaking Trade.


	12. Zevran's Metamorphosis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scientific discussion. A slight detour into politics of Thedas. Zevran becomes a darkspawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this, ironically, is what I post on Valentine's Day 2017. It's less inappropriate than some other chapters of this would be.

In the end, Zevran had decided to come along quietly (though Alim and the Architect had not let him have anything sharper than an Orlesian dinner knife, and Zevran had said he didn’t blame them), and share the last decade’s research details. Of course, this ended with Alim wanting to smack himself over the head for missing obvious details. But, if the Blight could change itself to adapt to a resistance factor, but still be susceptible to new ones, that seemed to indicate that it was a normal miasma that just happened to channel the Void, much the way mages were normal people who just happened to channel the Fade. Serault researchers had observed the same adaptive behavior in macro-miasmata, in his own time. Well, the last couple years of it, when he’d been too sick to really do much with others’ research. Perhaps it gained power with concentration, so that a fully Blighted creature the size of a person was intelligent through the Void, but a few drops of Blighted blood was not.

Anyway, it seemed Walder had been right. Dammit. At least the research was going somewhere, but dammit.

Right now, Zevran was sitting at the workbench, eating deepstalkers—cooked, which smelled absolutely disgusting. Really, putting fully dead tissue into your body, and even denaturing it first so it was destroyed beyond all recognition or usefulness? How did mortals not simply die from having all that rotting stuff in their stomachs?

Oh, right, they dissolved it in acid and absorbed the components. Still weird, to think about, especially now. Really, though, with Zevran being that close to the change, he should be eating them cooked rare, at least. He’d been feverish off and on the last couple weeks—Alim had been dosing him with willow tea, so he’d stop complaining about it—and the last few days, he’d had visible Blight stigmata. He was being annoyingly alive and mortal at the moment, though.

“So, as I understand it, which may be a bit off because I’ve been in Administration for the last twenty years, apparently pigs and pig blood are more sympathetically compatible with humans and elves than nugs are. We don’t really know why. Walder said he “went through a fucking bestiary and tried things till they worked.” Zevran gesticulated with his fork, making air quotes. “Nugs and pigs actually work about equally well for dwarves, in terms of reactions. Maybe it’s because they’re both adapted to being underground. But, the person you would really want to ask about that is Walder. That’s the problem; in order to keep up with research, you have to not be legally dead.”

“You’re legally dead, too,” Alim reminded him.

“Yes. It is inconvenient. Comes with a distinctive lack of seasoning or fine wines. It does give me a break from international denial of political involvement, though. Three different Warden-Commanders tried to assassinate me, the last decade, because they didn’t want to work for an elf. Some of them tried two or three times, before I traced the assassins back to them. Then I started to get old, and they figured I would be dead soon. Being already dying tends to stop assassins. Anyway, what was I going on about, with Walder’s research? Sympathetic compatibility?”

“Yes. And bestiaries. Do you know which one he used? I’m guessing Tevinter, one of them—the taxonomy’s pretty good. I mean, a lot of it’s to try to prove that humans are structurally superior to elves, but there’s some usable stuff, if you read between the lines and do your own comparisons of the diagrams, because they actually use dissection. I mean, so do the Wardens, but we focus on injury repair and darkspawn. Actually, has Serault gotten dissection decriminalized yet? That was going on, when I passed through on the way to Orzammar.”

“Sort of. Dissection itself is technically not illegal, but mages aren’t allowed to do it, and there’s dozens of restrictions, which make it pretty much impossible to actually perform legally often enough to be useful. Divine Victoria is still alive and of sound mind, and is for it, but there’s only so much even she can do. A lot of the resistance to it is imperial, in fact.”

“And that would be de Montfort. Well, I guess hope for progress was nice for a while.”

“Yes,” replied Zevran, rolling his eyes. “Why fund the advancement of knowledge and hope for the lessening of people’s suffering when you can look pious and grab all the money for yourself, even if you already have so much you could never spend it in your life if all you bought was lyrium in gold crucibles? Last I heard, he was considering making the University of Orlais charge tuition to students from the petty merchant class, in addition to those from grand merchants and nobility.”

“I’m getting a headache. I thought I wasn’t physically capable of headaches anymore.”

“You’ve only got a conceptual headache. I’ve got an actual blighted one. Pun intended, of course.”

“And you aren’t getting another dose of willow tea for two hours, yet. And stop scratching the blight marks, too. I can see you doing it.”

“I would never!” replied Zevran, in a wounded tone, hastily pulling the sleeve of his tunic back down. “But anyway, that is all I know, really. And I rather feel like lying down, now. It is strange—I can’t sleep properly, with the darkspawn dreams, but being awake does not work for very long either.”

Alim remembered how it had been, those last few days before the Architect had found him, when he had been running solely on his own healing and the last few bits of dried food in his bag; how he would have collapsed into the half-awake state the Architect had confronted him in much sooner without magic. Zevran would go over, any day now.

“You do that,” he said to Zevran. “I’ll wake you for your next dose.”

 

Zevran stayed huddled in blankets for the next few days, alternating between napping and shivering. The grey patches on his face and body spread a little. Alim was pretty sure that soon he would fully change into a darkspawn. He had read the Architect’s records of all unaccelerated turnings, including his own. They were rather laconic, though.

“Subject Alim taken in two days before crisis. Time from expiration to resurgence of respiration, 1.3 moments. Dental replacement beginning 37 days post-crisis.”

That was all. One fell asleep, was taken by the Blight (finally as fast as its ordinary victims were, once the body gave into it), stopped breathing, and then, through the force of the same Blight, only long tempered to one’s body and accustomed to the workings of all its systems, started breathing again.

Eventually, Zevran was unable to be roused; Alim concluded that the change had started, and settled in with a book to read between observations.

Several hours later, the pile of blankets began thrashing and screaming.

Zevran was yelling about dragons, and then, still yelling incoherently, tried to attack Alim with a cushion (from across the room, and without throwing it). He soon fell over, having gotten his foot tangled in a blanket. He proceeded to scrabble at the floor, as if to dig through the stone with his bare hands, frantically whimpering (in Antivan, with his eyes wide open) that he couldn’t see.

Whatever Zevran was doing, that made him so fixated on the floor, it did not seem like he was going anywhere (and there was a charm, outside the door, that would signal Alim if Zevran left the room, besides), so Alim ran down the hall to the lab and got the Architect.

“I thought it would be a few more days, myself, before he turned,” said the Architect, apologizing, as they ran back to Zevran’s cell.

“Is his fever supposed to go that high?”

“It is not the fever. He probably does not have one, by now. It is the process itself.”

“I didn’t get like that, when I turned.”

“I had you spelled, to keep you quiet. I did not want you to use all your strength, since you needed it to turn.” They were at the door, by now. The Architect opened it and went in; he took one look at Zevran, and made a few motions with his hands. Zevran went limp, but kept mumbling. The Architect lifted him with magic, and deposited him on the bed.

“Give me the thermometer,” he asked Alim. Alim already had it in hand; wordlessly, he handed it over, and the Architect stuck it under Zevran’s arm.

“No fever; you’re right,” said Alim, taking it out a couple minutes later. “If anything, that’s lower than normal, for him.”

“His mortal systems are failing. The Blight is taking them over.”

“What do we do?”

“We wait.”

Alim had seen people die, before. He had even seen them die of the Blight, before. He would have been lying, now, to say this was not similar. He recalled, with sudden, quiet fear, the Architect telling him, in the Temple of Urthemiel years before, that some Wardens did not survive the conversion process. Did age have anything to do with it? Zevran had joined—and thus been Called—far older than most. But at least unconscious, and breathing slower until one breathed no more, was not the worst way to go. It was certainly better than the coup-de-grace, or screaming till the very end.

So now he sat silent in wisplight, on the end of the bed, with the Architect just as silent on the bench across the room, watching Zevran’s chest rise and fall, watching the almost imperceptible spread of rough greyness across his face. It seemed not to move at all, until he compared it with what it had been a few hundred measures of dragonsong before. Then, he realized that it had advanced a finger’s width up his cheekbone and the bridge of his nose.

Zevran whimpered a bit in his spelled sleep. Out of habit—from his mortal days, but brought back by the sight of the man in front of him—Alim reached over and stroked Zevran’s hair. Half of it came away in his fingers. Alim stared at the strands for a long minute (grey, dyed gold), then returned his gaze to the movement of breath in Zevran’s chest. He would swear, now, that if his senses were mortal, he would not have been able to discern it.

Alim counted the beat of the dragonsong. Zevran was breathing in time with it, what little he did breathe, once per measure. Breath, two, three, four; breath, two, three, four. And the measure were slow and long. Two measures became four, then twenty, a hundred, a thousand. The song was, of course, eternal. Zevran slept on, the Blight crept on in his body, and Alim counted.

The breath skipped a measure. It came in time for the next, but then skipped again…and again…and again. Three became four became sixty. Seventy. This was too long. Even darkspawn had to breathe, if less often than mortals. Alim watched, holding his own breath, staring at the now fully grey, yet still elf-shaped face below his own. If Zevran never breathed again….

That was wrong. Alim had been supposed to die first; he always had. Yes, even before that day just before the Landsmeet when Alistair had told him just how long he had—Alim had sensed, the first time he met Duncan in Kinloch hold, that something was deathly wrong with the man’s essence, and had felt the same thing but less in Alistair, and within days of his own Joining had felt it in his own veins. Fate was cruel, if it let him live for essentially forever (as this!), but forced him to watch Zevran die, and then for Zevran to not even know him, while dying.

And then, on the eighty-third measure, the second and two-thirds beat, Zevran breathed. He breathed jerkily, deeply, with a great gasping noise as he drew the air in, the kind of breath that hurts. His breaths—the Blight’s breaths—were out of beat for a broadsheet page of measures or more, and then they found the rhythm, breath on the first beat, and then, after another long while, first and third.

“He has passed through the false death,” said the Architect, breaking the silence. “The rest of the changes are starting. You will want to get him on a chamber pot, before the Taint starts purging any dead matter left within him.”

“I don’t suppose any of the ancient dwarven privies in this thaig have withstood the centuries?”

“I…had not thought of that,” replied the Architect, chagrined. To be fair, he had not had to think of such needs since before the thaig they were in had fallen. It was not one of their normal thaigs, either, but one they had chosen for proximity, so they would not have to transport Zevran far, whatever condition they managed to catch him in.

“Go check?”

“Yes; the spell on him should hold for that long.”

The Architect returned a short time later. “There is one, a few rooms past the laboratory, in working order. I can carry him that far. Let us hope he will not ruin my robe.”

This was starting to look like a valid concern; Zevran was mumbling agitatedly, and seemed to be trying to curl in on himself as if having stomach pains, though he was either too spell-drugged or lacked the strength to do so. Nevertheless, the Architect picked him up like a sack of vegetables (force magic was good for something), and by great good luck they got to the privy without incident.

A great deal of unpleasantness followed. The Architect had to partially lift the spell on Zevran, so the Taint could do this part of its work, and the result was tearless crying, thrashing, and a lot of vomit and worse in unfortunate places. Eventually, it turned to dry heaves, then stopped. Alim and the Architect sluiced each other and Zevran down with buckets of mineral-smelling water from the ancient pump.

Even with the spell loosened, Zevran was now too weak to struggle. The Architect carried him back to his bed; then, he pulled out his belt knife.

“What are you doing?” yelped Alim.

“He needs fluids. Blood from another darkspawn is best, because it is living and he will not have to convert it. I can withstand this better than you. Do not worry, I did this for you too.”

“I don’t remember. Was that the spell?”

“Partly. Even without it, you would not have remembered very much. You have seen what it really is, now. Is that something you would want to remember experiencing?”

“No, but I would still want to choose.”

“I am not sure by then you were able to. Now, I must get on with this.” The Architect slit the vein in his left wrist, and placed it to Zevran’s mouth. At first there was no response; Zevran’s lips smeared slackly over the Architect’s wrist. Then, the ghoul began sucking and swallowing the ichor automatically. The Architect looked slightly pained, but he was right, Alim knew, there was little danger; at his size and age in the Blight, he could lose a pint, even two or a little more, without it becoming dangerous.

Long minutes later, the Architect drew his arm away and sat down heavily. Alim looked at him, eyebrows raised (or where eyebrows would be, if he could grow hair), and then looked pointedly at Zevran, lying still completely unconscious on the bed.

“Save your blood,” said the Architect, in response to the unspoken question. “You lose enough of it casting. A quart of mine should be enough, to see him through.”

“Do you want me to hunt for you?”

“No. I will manage.”

By which, the Architect meant that he would sneak out, in a few hours, lying that he was going to check on something in the temporary lab, and catch a few deepstalkers or a blightrat or some nugs in a baited sleep glyph, and eat them where no one could see. It was one of his few remaining taboos, adapted from his mortal life, and one he had implicitly taught Alim as well: They were not ruled by instinct, as were other darkspawn, and when they must behave as them, they must try to do so alone. Try—there were times, as with that battle with the Legion, where maintaining the façade had been impossible. Yet even then, he had made Alim find and spell the bronto, instead of simply throwing himself upon the nearest life-warm corpse. It had come close to maiming him.

Alim wondered if he would, this time, bring back one of his prey for Zevran—surely one’s transformation was enough distress to be considered a time for public eating. But he himself had not been afforded such a luxury when he had turned, at least not while awake, and it would be hard to eat while spelled like he had been, and like Zevran was. Perhaps he himself should catch something and bring it to Zevran—but the Architect might be angered, that he had interfered with the process. And Zevran was a hunter, an assassin; once he recovered and submitted enough to be allowed out unsupervised, he might very well kill something on his own.

And what powers might he discover, in the Blight, as he practiced that? That would be something to take note of, indeed. He thought over the details of Zevran’s life for indications; the immediately appearing idea of a darkspawn in lingerie who seduced prey was hysterical enough that it forced out a noise that was almost a laugh.

“Why haven’t you healed me yet?” asked the Architect irritably, attention now drawn to him.

“Sorry,” replied Alim hastily and automatically, and waved a hand with intent in the Architect’s general direction. He closed the wound in his wrist, and cast a general spell of regeneration—not that the latter would do much of anything, unless the Architect actually deigned to drink blood or water.

Hundreds more measures of the dragonsong slipped past. Eventually the Architect left, presumably to do things he was ashamed to let anyone see. Alim sat alone before the bed, humming along to the song in his bones. And after what might have been days or hours—it did not matter, to any of them, on the physical level, though Alim kept count and would write it down later for the Architect’s benefit—Zevran stirred, turned over, and woke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I imagine the darkspawn song as 60-80 bpm. Though, each beat has like 12 sub-beats, each old god is singing like 3 parts (because it's more telepathy than vocals), and not all of them are in the same time signature, just so long as they match up at some point. I’m pretty sure Alim’s going by Lusacan’s bass line.
> 
> This chapter was pretty hard to write. My main reference was actually watching a chicken die of pneumonia, when I was a child. (We had an organic farm, so we couldn't give it antibiotics. I'm not sure I fully realized how sick it was, either, until it died, or that I should get an adult to deal with it. But I sat with it until its neck pulled back and the phlegm drained out of its mouth, too late for that to be of any help, and I think that counts for something. And that's actually one of the less fucked-up things that happened in my childhood, so make of that what you will.) Still, as such things often are, it was much harder emotionally to write out than to plan. I hate putting characters in that kind of danger, even temporarily.


	13. A Rogue Gone Rogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zevran's got some issues with his new situation. The Architect has some issues with being a racist Tevinter asshat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zevran no; Alim no; Architect no.

“What on earth did you do to that wisplight? It’s really bright.”

Alim dimmed it. “That’s you, not me. You changed. Scared me to death, if I weren’t already dead. Undead. You know.”

“What? I did not do anything different—oh.” Zevran had gone to smooth back his hair, and it was no longer there. In addition, the skin of his entire hand and arm was thick and grey. “That kind of change. I just thought I had some particularly bad dreams. Being attacked after a target caught on. General Warden stuff. The taste of blood. What did I actually do?”

“You started raving. The Architect spelled you to sleep through it, and then you died for a bit, and then shat and puked like you’d drank water out of an open sewer. And then you drank about a quart of the Architect’s blood. Don’t worry, he’ll be fine. But, I’d been spelled the same way, when I went through it, so I had no idea what was happening. I thought—nevermind. You lived. Dead, but you live.”

“That explains a lot. I feel…floppy, and everything is so loud.”

Alim knew what he meant. “The Calling, and the spell wearing off.”

“I want to get out of here. I want to do something. Just…I am not sure I can stand up much, yet.” And then, his eyelids tightened around now-red pupil slits. “And I still don’t believe you’re you. I believe that it is more likely, now that…this has happened to me, but the Architect is cunning, the real you said so yourself, and I do not know what he wants with me.”

And with that, Zevran turned his back, and began reading a tattered modern novel that had been with his things when they had caught him.

Of course, when the Architect got back, some while later, he wanted to examine Zevran’s blood. Zevran was not amenable to this.

“Why can you not simply have Alim check it, with magic? I have some idea what can be done with an actual sample of my blood.”

“I will dispose of it properly, in your presence. I merely need to examine its color and consistency.”

“Then let him do it.”

“I have a gift for discerning and controlling the progress of the Blight. He is a proficient but garden-variety Fade-scryer. I should be the one doing this.”

“Is there not some other way?”

“Do not be silly,” said the Architect, reaching for Zevran’s arm.

The room turned into a whirlwind.

Zevran was still weak from his death, but he had been in peak condition for a man his age, before he went to the Deep Roads, and he was one of the world’s masters of unarmed combat. In so small a space, he had the upper hand, while the two mages could not cast much without catching each other in their spells, even with ones keyed to Zevran himself and not just thrown in his general direction. The fight was over in seconds. Zevran made it out the door—the door ward began to squawk—and ran off as fast as he could, into the shadows.

“Turn that wretched thing off,” croaked the Architect, from the floor. Alim dispelled the glyph, resetting it. He considered breaking it entirely, debated that it might be nice to know if Zevran came back, and then decided that the alarm might scare him off again, and broke one of the lines. He could fix it again, if he wished, later.

“I believe I said that forcing him would not go well,” remarked Alim, in as deferent a tone as he could muster.

“Shut up and heal me,” snapped the Architect. “I think he broke a rib.”

Zevran had, in fact, broken two of the Architect’s ribs, and sprained his right wrist; he had also hit his head on the way down to the floor. Alim had not been in Zevran’s range until the fight was nearly over, and only had a bruised shoulder from being shoved into the wall.

He healed the Architect. And he really hoped the other darkspawn had eaten something, while he had been gone.

“He is not very stable,” groused the Architect, as Alim healed him. “He may be going feral. If he comes back, we will see, but you must prepare yourself for the possibility of having to put him down.”

“He’s pissed off, you idiot!” yelled Alim, stopping the flow of healing. The important damage was fixed, anyway. “He’s also in an unfamiliar situation, with people he doesn’t trust, since he doesn’t believe I’m me, still. He fought his way out of here without killing you. That’s not feral.”

“Still, it is a known occurrence with elves—”

“Slaves, you mean? Oh, yes, drag someone away from everything they’ve known, force them to work for you, make sure they can’t go back, and they barely understand the situation or why you think they have to be there—and if they react with anger, they are a mad animal. Even the Circles here in the South knew better than that, at least when it came to children. ‘Adjustment shock,’ they called it, which is better than ‘going feral,’ though it still leaves out the impact of ‘I’ve been kidnapped and I’m not happy about it.’ We’re not your slaves, in case our ears have made you forget that. I killed you once, back when I was still mortal. Don’t try me too much.”

“Really?” said the Architect, voice smooth, face blank. “You think you could, alone? It took four of you, back then, with two of you being healers. And I went easy on the lot of you, because someone needed to destroy the Mother, once I realized that I would be hurt too badly to finish that task, whether I won or not. And you think I would not simply possess your body, even if you succeeded?

“I think I could. And I think you wouldn’t. I was not human; I am at best a proximal or second-choice target. I know the Litany of Adralla. And I struck down an archdemon once, and did not die, and I think the remnants of that binding ward would at least deflect you elsewhere. I think I could even bind you to a specific body, if I had time to do it.”

The Architect just looked at him, with that sad half-smile. Then, slowly, he clenched his hand, and every nerve in Alim’s body flashed white with pain and he crumpled.

That was Blight magic. It was much the same spell he had so often used in battle against darkspawn, only then he used it to boil blood. Lower-powered and turned on the nerves, it was non-fatal, and only felt like fire and electricity. That was the Architect’s power in the Blight, and the first time he had really seen it—and he knew that it was but the tenth part of what the ancient magister was capable of doing to him. The pain ceased as quickly as it began, but his nerves still ached with the memory of it. He lay on the floor, gasping, as the Architect reproved him.

“You do not even know how little in power you compared to me. If anything, my powers are even stronger against you now, because the Blight is stronger in you. I was a Dreamer of old, before I lost the ability to sleep, and I have only grown with the centuries, set back only a little with each body’s death. You are my apprentice, not my slave, but I will not take this from you. Threats, nor insolence. Turning Zevran was your idea, and you are to blame for any consequences. Now heal me.”

Alim did.

 

Zevran came back a few days later, covered in blood and carrying a sack full of live nugs. He apparently considered these a peace offering, to be eaten. The Architect was, to put it mildly, displeased.

“Now that is a load of void-blasted muddlery,” remarked Zevran, after having been given the lecture on “we are above our instincts, and not to be ruled by them, and any display of them is weakness.” “You have a point on certain matters, such as not killing with abandon, and staying away from the Old Gods, but at the same time, I do not see you attempting to stop breathing. I do not see how eating is weakness, or that it should be unenjoyable. Use the nugs for research, then. I am leaving.”

Alim followed him to the door but no further, and he swore he felt the Void ripple, and that Zevran became invisible in the shadows long before he should have been out of sight.

The Architect’s records indicated that darkspawn conversion usually entailed increased aggression. With Zevran, that was apparently largely passive-aggression. He developed the habit of showing up in the lab every few days, appearing seemingly out of nowhere (even to Alim, who should have sensed his presence), and usually while eating something. His teeth and claws were growing in, and he was getting quite good at making convincing threat displays with them. Perhaps he had been observing unawakened darkspawn. After all, at this point they would no longer attack him, unless provoked. The Architect ordered Alim to try to determine if this was the case, but even with magic, Zevran proved impossible to follow.

In fact, that was how they pinned down what Zevran’s Blight powers actually were. He was capable of hiding himself from sight and magic in the void. The eye simply slid off him, unless he wished to be seen, and his essence could only be felt as turbulence, if one was even searching for it, like black ink marks on redacted documents, that show that something was there but not what.

Zevran had been unaware that this was magic; he just thought that his altered senses allowed him to be extra sneaky. And then, one day, he was trying to sneak into the lab, Alim had been using magic to scry at something and had noticed that his surroundings felt a bit odd and cast a general dispell to clear up interference, and suddenly Zevran was obviously in the room. For once, Zevran cooperated with scientific investigation. He was not a mage, exactly—he would have looked different to Alim, in the Fade and the Void, if he were—and he could not cast normal spells, but both Alim and the Architect thought that with time he might learn to make armor of the Void, or at least to hide himself better. Once one knew what to look for, his current ability to mask his magical signature was something of a giant sign saying “please don’t look here,” which, of course, meant that that was obviously where to look.

But Zevran still would not really work with them, now that his strength was coming back, and he still was spending most of his time away from observation, hunting and eating regularly. He occasionally broke off in the middle of conversations, saying that the song had distracted him, and he seemed to feel more of its pull than Alim did. The Architect, of course, could not feel it at all. Alim argued that he himself had his own powers of song, and those protected him, and that Zevran would eventually adjust. The Architect countered with Utha; Alim quoted the statistics on dwarven Wardens, and how their Callings began an average of three years later than other races’ (according to his own studies of Weisshaupt records), implying some resistance. As for the constant hunting, the Architect feared it was bloodlust, while Alim speculated it might be related to his Blight powers, and that their manifestation in a non-mage was burning through his reserves. The Architect kept forboding the worst. Alim began to suspect that the Architect was, in fact, jealous of Zevran—not that he had not anticipated that—or at least of how Zevran was more willing to communicate with him.

The thaig was also becoming a problem. The plan had been to get Zevran, oversee his conversion, and then return to the Tower of Ishal, to resume the ongoing _S. korcariensis_ experiments. Instead, Zevran only showed up for a few hours every couple of weeks, thus needing them to be there for him to check in with, and they did not dare raise the subject of moving on those occasions. They considered cutting their losses and leaving Zevran behind, but Alim would not have it, and there was too much danger he might be discovered by a group of Wardens or Legion forces larger than he could handle or be able to hide from. Alim suggested that he, personally, stay behind as Zevran’s liason, and the Architect go back to Ostagar, but the Architect refused—and Alim did not blame him. He had threatened him, and it would be too easy for him to raise an army, unsupervised. The same could be said of the Architect, in fact, but Alim had the song powers and the military experience.

And then, unexpectedly, after an absence considerably longer than usual—Alim had been considering searching for a body, in fact—Zevran appeared one day, and told Alim that he finally believed it really was him. Alim expected a trap; however, perhaps Zevran had been convinced by the reality of his own transformation. Even—especially—when Zevran began kissing him, he expected to find a knife in his kidneys. But the knife never came. Three days later, they began the trek back to the Tower of Ishal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "...dead. Undead. You know." Cue the realization that both their names have the same number of syllables as "Bela Lugosi," and that my brain needs to not while I'm editing.
> 
> Alim's mostly right about Zevran's problems—he doesn't trust either of them, but is still pretty much forced to be semi-dependent on them, and his brain has to deal with magey stuff that it wasn't designed for. Like, even less than the others' brains are. No one's really cut out for dealing with what's likely an ancient elven bioweapon. (Source for that claim: [DA wiki page for Andruil's codex](dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Codex_entry:_Elven_God_Andruil), which mentions a plague from the Void eating her lands.)
> 
> That the Architect is racist is like, "He's a Magister from ancient Tevinter, no fucking shit." It's come up, in bits, before. Here, though, with regards to Zevran, I had to address it head on. In fact, I had to stop myself from writing the Architect as lashing out at Alim for the heck of it, because I realized that doesn't fit his canon characterization. He'll justify unimaginable things for science, and doesn't seem to care about the effects on others, but he isn't cruel for the sake of it. But I really wanted to show off that "neural agonizer" (yes, Asimov, no idea if I got the term right though) blight power—which I consider well within range of his canon powers—so I had Alim threaten him, which is a thing he'd do, since he would pick Zevran over the Architect, any day.


	14. What Darkspawn Do in the Shadows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why Zevran is actually doing everything the Architect and Alim were worried about him doing, last chapter. 3.5k of sex and violence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zevran, Zevran....
> 
> Tags have updated. Please read them. Also, a fair amount of eating things, darkspawn fashion, in this chapter, but not in an explicitly sexualized way. (Like, okay, probably subtext, but no one's dropping raw meat on anyone during sex. Got to save some depravity for later. Meaning, if someone asks, I'll try.) I'm pretty sure someone who's into that would still find it appealing.

The real reason for Zevran’s constant hunting was much less arcane. Put simply, he just could not stop jerking off.

It had been a habit of his, since adolescence, if he was bored and not in public, to play with himself, not towards any real end, but just to soothe himself, and feel a vaguely pleasurable sensation. And, under a desk, if no one else was in his office at Weisshaupt, had counted as “not in public.” Often, he did not get more than half-hard doing it. If he did, he would just go to the privy and bring himself off. And if he went too far, under his desk, and reached the point of no return by accident…well, that was what tunics were for, and Alim was actually into it. And after Alim had left for his Calling, there had been no one who was going to notice, anyway.

An odd behavior, he supposed, perverted even, to some people, but it had not been a problem, while he was alive, especially as he got older, and it took longer for him to get properly hard anyway. No, the problem was that he was a darkspawn now, and his dick would go from limp to poker-stiff with even gentle stimulation, seemingly without the possibility of any state in between, and then it would not go down for several _hours_. And that was if he tugged at it with all his might, splashing the walls of his favorite hidey-hole over and over again with ichor.

Of course, masturbation had been almost the first thing he had tried, once he had been sure that Alim and the Architect were not following him. He really had not expected them to give up the chase so fast. Didn’t darkspawn have better senses, and, usually, could sense each other? Perhaps it was a show of goodwill. Perhaps he had overreacted. Better safe than blood-bound, though. And there he had been, alone in what had probably once been a storage closet, pulling his cock out of his ill-fitting trousers. He had not even felt desire, simply curiosity. After all, living practically forever seemed like a much less enjoyable prospect if one’s genitals did not work. All had gone well, with the first climax. For some reason he was cumming black, and a lot, but nothing hurt, and darkspawn blood was black, too, so maybe this was part of being a darkspawn. He had been hard after it, still, but that was not outside the bounds of normal Warden stamina, especially when he had been younger, and the darkspawn conversion seemed to have revitalized him. It was when he was still raging hard after the second orgasm that he realized that he might have a problem.

After six orgasms, it was not so much that he stopped being aroused, but that an intense hunger and thirst took precedence. He wanted to eat and drink, but also, strangely, to bite and kill. He wondered if this was something he should go ask not-Alim and the Architect about, but even now, pride dissuaded him. Instead, he left the storage closet (which now reeked of ichor), found some water (which helped, but not nearly enough), and then wandered around the thaig, looking for something to make a trap with.

As it happened, he was swarmed by deepstalkers. That was a problem, but mostly due to their numbers; individually, deepstalkers are about the size of very large chickens, or perhaps rather small geese, and thus ideal prey. Zevran discovered that he was now almost immune to their spit, though he was going to wash that off as soon as he had a chance, even so; it still stung a little. He managed to break the neck of one of them, then, taking it with him, climbed up onto the pedestal of an ancient statue, where the rest of the deepstalkers could not reach him. He tried to bite into the deepstalker, but his teeth were not sharp enough—perhaps they would change, eventually? Had that happened to not-Alim? Maybe that thing was actually Alim? No, it couldn’t be—so he tried with a knife he had found, in the thaig. Blood oozed from the wound in the dead deepstalker, and suddenly the only thing that mattered was to lick it. He did, until there was no more, and then he began cutting off chunks of meat and eating them. He should be repulsed by the texture of the raw flesh, he felt, but somehow he was not; in fact, it felt like the best meal he had ever eaten. Soon the deepstalker was bones, and he was somehow still hungry. Zevran climbed down from the pedestal (the deepstalkers were still there, circling), baited them close with the stripped carcass of the one he had eaten, nabbed one, wrung its neck, and climbed back up before the pack could bite through his ankles. He repeated the same process as before; then, utterly stuffed, he threw the bones down to the deepstalkers, and waited till they finished picking at the last scraps and went away.

After that, Zevran resolved not to even think about touching his cock unless he had a food supply ready. He was still unwilling to ask the others for details—especially after they yelled at him for eating “without needing to”—but he was pretty sure that sex worked the same way as being wounded, except that it compelled you to equivalently stab yourself over and over again. The problem was his mortal habits. He would read his tattered copy of _Hard in Hightown_ , and absently brush at the crotch of his breeches. He would lie on his stomach, and even that contact would arouse him. He would remember some debauchery from his past, and there would be Messere Cock, poking its head out of his foreskin, already staining his trousers with a few drops of black fluid. And then, there was nothing for it but to take the matter in hand, until he pumped out so much ichor that he was dizzy, and then to try to lick up what had splattered on the wall, so as to have just enough strength to replenish himself properly.

Eventually, he learned to eat before he succumbed to temptation, and to trap nugs and keep them in makeshift cages, so as to have a source at hand. When his teeth started to fall out, he learned to butcher the nugs properly, with the blood draining into a bowl, and to drink that. As soon as his new teeth started to come in, he bit at a live nug in desperation—for he had ended up almost too weak to stand, after an ill-timed moment of distraction—and though his teeth were not long enough to pierce the jugular properly, he worried at it until the flesh finally gave, and drank. Red, mortal blood smeared over his face and ran down his chin, staining his already black-stained robe with red, but Zevran did not care; this was how darkspawn were supposed to eat, living meat and blood from a creature whose heart still beat, from the body into the mouth, not dead flesh, no matter how freshly killed.

It had been decades since Zevran had had any qualms about killing, especially of animals, so the first thing he did, once his front teeth had grown most of the way in—perhaps three months after his conversion—was to hunt food for pleasure. Nugs were easiest to catch, but deepstalkers tasted better and were a fun challenge. He could trap them, of course, or even “fish” for them with wire and a bit of meat, but something was driving him to hunt, to make the kill with his still-growing teeth and claws. He found a low ledge, lured deepstalkers beneath it, and pounced on the largest one he could see, breaking its back so it was paralyzed but still breathing. Strangely, the other deepstalkers did not seem to notice him. Perhaps it was the nug carcass he had used as bait; deepstalkers preferred almost anything to darkspawn, though they did not always catch the Blight after biting them or even eating a tainted corpse, perhaps because of something related to their acid spit. Perhaps not-Alim was right, and he really was using minor magic, though he felt certain that was only a lie to get him to cooperate. In any case, he was able to disable two more deepstalkers in a similar manner, and then throw them up onto his ledge and scramble back up himself, where he sank his teeth into the first one’s throat and felt the satisfying rush of hot blood into his mouth—like the liquid yolk of a fried egg, almost, but richer, more metallic, and so, so, alive. He drank as much of the blood as he could easily suck out—perhaps almost half a pint—and then tore into its muscles, scraping the living meat off the bones with his teeth, barely remembering to avoid the venom sacs and stomachs in his haste. And then he did it again. He did not know how he managed to fit three whole deepstalkers in his stomach—he only felt pleasantly full, and his stomach did not even seem very distended. The heads of the deepstalkers remained, and seemed oddly fascinating, just the right size to bite. Curious, Zevran did so; the skull parted without too much difficulty under his teeth, and he sucked the brain out, and this was the tastiest thing yet, blood-filled and rich. He had to try to find some bigger animal, he decided, with a larger brain to eat, if they tasted so good.

Zevran lounged on his ledge, curled up, savoring the satisfaction of being replete and almost, somehow, warm. It felt so nice. Too nice. Eating to excess, it turned out, brought on desire.

“Not this again,” he thought. He just wanted to stay here, curled up, as he converted the flesh and blood he had consumed into tainted matter. He tried to ignore the pressure in his groin. But the urge made sense, in a horrific way: Zevran knew the gist of how broodmothers were converted, and knew that people and animals were eaten by the darkspawn doing the converting before the process started. His body had interpreted his overindulgence as just such preparation. He tried to will his erection away, thinking of giant spider victims, Corypheus in panties, paralysis magic, and every time he had ever seriously injured himself, but the problem was that being a Crow and then later a Warden had inured him to a great many terrible and disgusting things, and while he did not have any actual predilection for most of them, they did not cause him to experience the sort of deflation that they would inflict upon most men. Becoming a darkspawn had changed his reactions even further, to where he could rip the throats out of animals with his teeth without any sense of horror, and could become aroused while surrounded by his mangled leavings barely twenty minutes later. The few images that had worked on inopportune boners in his mortal life had almost no impact now (not even paralysis magic), and soon he could resist his insistent arousal no longer, and in desperation frantically clutched and massaged his still-clothed groin.

Zevran knew that if he kept this up he would soon have a massive black stain on his crotch, but he was already covered in all manner of unpleasant stains, black, drying red, blood-brown, and otherwise. He could smell it, that he positively reeked of blood and ichor, though it did not disgust him; he was used to it, and though becoming a darkspawn had sharpened his sense of smell, it had dulled his emotional reactions to it. One more stain would not add much to it, and his soiled pants would be covered by his robe. And it was simply too much to bear to stop touching himself, even for just long enough to open his pants and take his cock out. He pressed his fingers against his trapped cock, stroking along his shaft and over the flared edge of the head, feeling a wet spot already forming over the tip. That was sooner than usual. He was overhydrated, so full of blood and meat that the Taint which ruled his body had decided that he could afford to lose a little moisture, for the sake of spilling and spreading itself everywhere. His clothes, and this entire corner of the deep roads, would corrupt any mortal flesh that touched them for years to come.

Already the heat and pressure in his belly and groin were building up to that last stretch of pleasure before orgasm. Unwilling to draw it out, since he knew he would be spending several hours here at least before he was able to move to somewhere more comfortable, Zevran stretched out and tensed his body, reaching down with one hand to rub the seam of his sac between his balls, and came moments later with a soft, broken groan, feeling his pants turn sodden as his cock spurted nearly half a pint of dark, sticky liquid into them. He continued to rub himself through the mess, as his cock leaked out a few last feeble squirts of ichor, shuddering at the sudden hypersensitivity. Now, the friction of wet cloth on his cock was almost painful; it was also, at that moment, the best thing he had ever felt. Zevran rubbed and kneaded until the aftershocks had died down and his arousal had begun the long climb to another orgasm, and then peeled off his ruined pants. Darkspawn could not feel temperature, unless it actually approached freezing or burning, but forcing one’s self to wear wet clothing in whatever the temperature was in this part of the Deep Roads was still probably a bad idea. Now naked from the waist down, Zevran sat against the wall of his ledge with his robe bunched up behind him and his legs spread in a V in front. His cock jutted out from between them, curving slightly up, slick with ichor, clotting at the edge of his foreskin. He began stroking his cock with his left hand, wringing it so desperately it hurt, while he braced his right hand against the ground. He slid his foreskin as far back as it could go and rubbed the sensitive flesh beneath with only ichor for lube—and that did hurt—and that was enough to bring him over the edge for the second time. It was not even a particularly powerful climax, but the angle of his cock sent ichor flying over the edge of the ledge he was sitting on. Were the deepstalkers still there, beneath? He peered below, and saw no lizards, but that did not mean anything. Scrabbling around, Zevran found a few deepstalker bones and tossed them over the edge. Yes—several rocks moved, and turned into hungry animals. Well, at this rate, he would be able to catch another deepstalker, when he was done, to offset the consequences of the previous three.

Thought was rapidly becoming nigh-impossible again, thanks to the insistent ache in his groin. Still peering over the edge, on hands and knees, Zevran pumped himself a few times, moaning in relief. He paused to pinch his nipples for a bit, straightening up and arching his back—he was so aroused that his entire body ached for touch, and his nipples were like points of fire that sparked when he finally gave them his attention. He gasped at the pleasure-pain racing through his chest and down to his stomach, thrusting his hips uncontrollably; if the deepstalkers wanted a show, they were definitely getting one. His cock swung and dripped a bit on the stone beneath him.

His crotch was again demanding his attention. Fuck, he wished he had clamps, so he did not have to decide between two erogenous zones. But all he had were his hands and a pile of deepstalker carcasses (and the latter were not just dead, but also full of acid), so he settled for pinching one nipple only, and sliding his foreskin over the head of his cock with his other hand. The pleasure was exquisite, but his orgasm was still maddeningly out of reach. The first couple were always easy, but the rest took longer and longer, while his sensitivity and arousal built up to the brink of madness. He needed to touch someone. He needed to get fucked. He needed a body to rut against and thrust himself into, to bite and claw and fill up. He needed to be that savaged body. But he was alone. So he squeezed the head of his cock until he saw white from the pain of it, and when even that failed to bring him off, he gritted his teeth and forced the claw of his little finger into his pisshole, all the way in until flesh met flesh, throwing his head back as the tearing pain and pleasure of that penetration became unbearable in a dozen different ways, and he bled and ejaculated ichor around his invading claw.

Panting, Zevran fell back on the floor of the ledge, still stroking himself weakly. He was still quite hard. Maker, why was he still hard? He did not want to think about anything remotely sexual ever again, but at the same time the curse in his veins drove him to think of nothing else but things he could rub against or shove his cock in or shove into various parts of himself. And none of it ever seemed to help; the more he found release, the more frantic he got, until only dehydration forced his cock to go down. Perhaps the Chantry was right; that this was true corruption, and that the hubris of men—not just people but the gender, men, for, though he himself knew otherwise, now, the Southern Chantry taught that all of the Sidereal were male—had given them a twisted perversion of everything men had ever wanted. A black city, when they sought the golden, and unending sexual torment, when they sought stamina and prowess. What was breaching the Fade, after all, but the ultimate act of fucking, to rape the nature of the universe itself? It had better have given the Architect and the rest of them the best ever metaphorical orgasm, Zevran decided, to justify its consequences. His entire body hurt from arousal, and he would have accepted a proposition even from a broodmother, or from the uncanny valley that was not-Alim.

Who might actually be Alim. Zevran looked down at himself. His own skin was grey, his fingernails were claws, his teeth (as he felt them with his tongue) were spikes, and his cum, spattered all over him, was black. His hair was gone, and his eyes, when (not-?)Alim had shown them to him in a glass, when he had first changed, were red. He was not an elf anymore. No one he had left behind in the world above would even recognize him. If they did, they, too, would think him a mockery of a dead man, and kill him again, to lay him to rest and rid the living of his evil. He considered his own form more closely, as he continued to stroke himself, simply because it was unbearable to do otherwise. Surely his fingers had not been so long in life. He looked more like the creature that called itself Alim, now, than he looked like the man who had been trapped in a sleep glyph by him, months ago. Since such a transformation was demonstrably possible (with his own monstrosity as proof)…that would explain, then, why these creatures had hunted and caught him in the first place, why Alim (he might as well call him that) had argued with the Architect in his favor—yes, he had overheard—why the Architect seemed jealous, even, and was so pessimistic about his sanity; why Alim had Alim’s earring and Alim’s vallaslin. He _was_ Alim, that was the simplest option, and Zevran hoped that he had not permanently turned him against him. Especially, he thought now, if such a thing meant that he would never again get fucked.

Hours and hours later, when his mouth had gone dry from all the fluid pumped out of his balls, and when he could at last bear to leave his cock untouched for more than a few seconds, Zevran dropped down from his ledge, grabbed another deepstalker, and ran for his main hideout with the last of his energy. He did not notice the shadows ripple around him, or the way the deepstalkers all seemed compelled to look anywhere but exactly where he was (though, he did notice that the deepstalker he held seemed confused, and was not attacking him). He devoured the deepstalker, and felt much less parched. His arousal did not come back; he had, after all, just come nearly a dozen times.

Then, he went to wash his clothes. If he was going to make things up with Alim, the least he could do was not be covered in stiffened gore. Maybe he should find the Architect first, even, and ask for fresh clothes. Perhaps it would be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zevran was there during the Fifth Blight when Alim found Hespith. So, he has a firsthand account to confirm what the Wardens already were pretty sure about broodmothers.
> 
> The blood/egg yolks thing: fun fact, you can actually use animal blood as an egg substitute, though it makes all the baked goods look weird. (Though like, if you want to write an extremely gruesome Homestuck fic where the troll blood is whatever color you want, idk for forced cannibalism, _Hannibal_ style, or something, feel free. Now I'm never going to get that image out of my head. It's a whole scenario now and I'm not even into that.) I have never actually done this. I read about some researchers doing it as a way to make food more sustainable (because normally blood from slaughtering gets wasted), and also maybe for people who can't eat eggs. So, uh, have fun with this knowledge. Though, if you're still reading this fic, you're probably not too grossed out.


	15. Magic and Dragons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The difference between the Blight itself and Blight magic is like the difference between mages and ordinary magic. That is, if mortality were a nasty virus. Dragons and their blood are also magic. Oh, and did we forget the Augur existed?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue gets way harder when there's more than three people talking for extended periods of time.

Amazingly, things were in fairly good order at the Tower of Ishal. Spiders and the rest had managed not to break anything important; there was some work lost from the unexpected extension of their absence, but nothing that was irreplaceable. Most importantly, none of the corrupted drakes had been killed or gotten out. Dragon blood, they had found, was imperative in creating the proper sort of binding to make the Architect’s reverse Joining work; drakes were almost certainly not as good as an Archdemon, but the species was the same, and it created enough of the spell for its traces to make the Awakening work.

Both Alim and the Architect had forgotten to warn Zevran about the Disciples, and that nearly caused an incident. Zevran saw Spiders, dropped into an attack posture with all his claws displayed, and began an unearthly hissing and shrieking. Spiders responded in kind. Alim, after a moment of shocked silence, stepped between them, yelling with a good deal of his Blight power, “Knock it off, you two!” When they stopped, deferring to him, he continued, “What on earth are you doing the, both of you?”

“He was Bad,” said Spiders, whose vocabulary was a bit limited. “He thinks I’m not to be here. So he did a wild darkspawn thing. That’s bad.”

“Zevran?” asked Alim.

“You didn’t tell me anyone else was here. I thought a wild darkspawn had gotten in. I have had to deal with some, back at the thaig. That’s how you negotiate. It usually works. They let me have a knife once, to make a full set. Don’t look at me like that! I did not think you were you, yet, and I thought I might have to live with ordinary darkspawn, to survive.”

“So you can communicate with them?” asked the Architect.

“Yes,” said Zevran, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Much of it is understanding, through the song. Most of the rest is gesture. They understand a few words, but only the emissaries actually speak. Noises are sometimes used, as you just saw. Threatening establishes hierarchy, as does fighting, if necessary. It is possible to win such fights without killing, at times. Some darkspawn assumed I was weak right from the start, for some reason, until I fought them. I think they thought I was newly spawned, which in a sense I am.”

“Yes,” said Spiders. “I don’t have the song, now, but I can still feel darkspawn a bit, and he feels like a young darkspawn. Alim too, when you first getted him. Now he feels more like me, but less than you. You’re older than everyone.”

“Fascinating,” said the Architect. “And it’s got, not getted.”

“That was still very good talking, though,” added Alim, hastily. It would not do to discourage Spiders from speaking to them, especially if he had insights like this. He was childlike, at times, and often distractable, but he was not, in fact, stupid, Alim had noticed. In fact, the real problem was that, if one humored him, he would never stop asking for explanations of things, and then one could never get anything done.

“Anyway,” said the Architect, “part of the focus of our research is creating an Awakening that does not completely blot out the Song, only lessen it—much the state that you former Grey Wardens are in. The Joining is part organic resistance, part blood binding, and the traces of the latter, when inverted, completely cut off a darkspawn from that part of the Void. It also lessens their abilities. Administering the original Joining to an Awakened darkspawn does not reverse this, though admittedly we only had the blood of a Blighted drake, not an archdemon, so it might simply not have been strong enough.”

“And, obviously, darkspawn are often distressed if they cannot hear the Song,” put in Alim. “Thus the whole business with the Mother, back then. Though, the way he was going at it, on a theory of pure magical corruption, the alternative probably would have been two more Blights in rapid succession, and he never would have met me, so it’s probably a good thing that everything happened the way it did.”

“Wait, are you two trying to Awaken an archdemon?” asked Zevran, in horror. All the talk had been of saving them, before.

“No,” said the Architect. “We are trying to make an Old God immune to the Blight. We did not lie to you, before. We also want to find a way to Awaken darkspawn without maiming their connection to the Void. These goals are related.”

“The Warden ability to sense darkspawn is part of the blood binding,” clarified Alim. “Otherwise, we would not be able to until when, or shortly before, we began to hear the Calling itself. Archdemons are dragons, corrupted ones, and their blood is dragon blood. That their blood is also Blighted is, for magical purposes, almost irrelevant. After all, the Joining contains ordinary darkspawn blood as well; an uncorrupted Old God’s blood would probably serve equally well. The Joining binds a Warden to the Archdemons, corrupted or not, and darkspawn blood, secondarily, to the horde that hears them. But originally, I believe the Joining was supposed to be a blood binding upon Dumat himself—the blood taken from one of his slain bodies, when his soul went into another. Drinking normal darkspawn blood, plus all the other poisons to mitigate it, was to gain immunity long enough to get to Dumat to bind him. In fact, the darkspawn blood and Dumat’s blood were consumed upon separate occasions, because the first time, Dumat hadn’t been killed yet. The records from that era are falling to pieces with age, and understandably haphazard—it was a cabal, more than an order, back then—but I think the original intent was for all the Grey Wardens to die, in the final battle of the First Blight, to bind Dumat’s soul with their blood, after they had been bound by blood to him. Or, perhaps, all but the one who struck the final blow—the one who did, as it turns out, actually die, along with several others who got kicked to death by a seizing dying dragon—to trap the Old God’s soul in an uncorrupted body, a body it couldn’t turn. But apparently binding a soul into one’s self is not the same as spirit or demon possession, and it turns out that Grey Wardens are corrupted, it just takes longer. None of the original ones lived long enough to know, probably. I think Mythal got it right the second time around, with me and Morrigan.”

“Mythal was involved in the creation of the Wardens? And you didn’t tell me?” asked Zevran.

“I am not entirely certain. There’s a reference to someone who might be related to her. Some of the Joining is taken from elvhen lore. But Mythal sure knew an awful lot about the magic side of being a Warden, and the nature of the bindings, hers and the Joining one, is similar. Some of that I only learned recently, from the Architect’s glyphwork—and no, I’m not telling you what. I’m not risking you untangling that.”

“I would not either, if I were you,” admitted the Architect.

“In any case, it’s the dragon’s blood that really makes the Joining work. Dragons, all of them, are extremely susceptible to the Taint, we’ve found, but it rarely kills them. They harbor corruption without submitting to its thrall in the same way as most ghouls. Their blood, once corrupted, also contains extremely high concentrations of the Taint, even compared to us—on a level with the Architect, pretty much, and he went into the Fade and caught it before mortals could develop any sort of heritable resistance. Drakes don’t get any power beyond unnatural strength, thank the Maker, but for me, looking at them is…I scry the Blight in them, and it’s so dense. It’s like it’s leaking off of them into the air, like vapors off a brewer’s vat. And the dragon’s blood changes us so we’re just a bit like that, so we can survive with it a little better, so we can survive the conversion to be what we are now. Plus, its concentration means that the Joining can work. We have the corrupted drakes for just that, for Joining research animals. I’m a little miffed I spent so many years at Weisshaupt magically concentrating ordinary darkspawn blood, when I could have just done that.”

“Weisshaupt fortress has a city around it. Keeping Blighted dragonkind would not have been a good idea in any case,” said Zevran.

“I suppose. Still, it annoys me.”

“But our idea is to find a way to produce permanent resistance without relying on a binding, to protect the Old Gods, and to do so without actually infecting them,” said the Architect. “Then, a binding to free darkspawn from the compulsion to seek them out, without cutting them off from each other’s minds entirely. Thus, we could end the Blights.”

“And we need to make the resistance strong enough to work on dragonkind,” added Alim. “The problem is, they’re so susceptible. Touching them at all corrupts them. Touching them even with clean gloves still is pretty high risk. Handling them entirely with magic seems better, but sometimes they just spontaneously corrupt in our presence. I’m not sure if it’s something about our magic coming from the Void, or if the miasma spreads through air. It doesn’t, normally, at least not for other creatures. What we need are unturned Warden allies, to be honest.”

“We have been effectively Joining animals for years,” said the Architect. “Why not capture a few mortals and Join them?”

“Because it’s wrong to grab ordinary people and force them to work for a bunch of horrifyingly corrupted monsters against their will?” asked Zevran, bitterly.

“You’re both right,” said Alim, who was beginning to find himself stepping into the middle of a lot of disputes. “We do need relatively uncorrupted people. Wardens aren’t fulminantly corrupted like we are, the Taint is still only in the blood, nerves, and spinal fluid, so they’ll be able to handle the dragons safely. Also, we need people who can go to the surface and be people; I mean, we still don’t have a Maker-damned centrifuge, or several vital component parts to build one because they hadn’t been invented by the First Blight, or the ability to make those parts. If we could just buy one, it wouldn’t be an issue. But we can’t go taking random people. Either we convince them, or at least we take a Warden and persuade them.”

“And if they’re not persuaded, we bind them to silence and forgetfulness and let them go,” finished the Architect. “I know you hate killing mortals. But yes, we should Join some. I can even freeze their corruption at its initial stages to further reduce the risk of it spreading to the dragons, and to avoid having to convert them after only a few decades, if we get the mortals relatively young.”

“Why not just un-blight the dragons, then?” asked Zevran. “Your powers, what you did to Fiona?”

“They are dragons. My magic is unpredictable with regards to dragons. The Blight is too strong against them. And removing the Taint from Fiona was…mostly an accident, and only possible because of a special charm I do not have the materials to recreate.”

“So, my thought has been to find some Wardens who are anxious to live longer without relying on experimental philters, and offer them a chance to do that in return for dragon handling and the occasional supply run,” finished Alim. “Do you know of any who would be good targets for such…endeavors, Zev?”

“Well, not in southern Ferelden. In Weisshaupt, yes, a few, if you are willing to make the journey. At Vigil’s Keep or Soldier’s Peak, there may be more. I have no way of knowing when any expeditions into the Deep Roads will be, but I suggest we try to find one.”

“The Augur,” said Alim.

“The what?” asked Zevran, picturing a drill bit. Alim explained.

“So, she can’t track Wardens, but she will know if darkspawn are being slaughtered by them, you mean,” said Zevran.

“Yes. And, yes, that’s how we found you.”

“And I thought the all-seeing Maker was bad enough.”

“So, how many of us go to the Frostbacks?” asked Alim.

“All of us,” said the Architect. “He”—meaning Zevran—“has not met her yet, but should.” (A weight of dread and embarrassment settled over Zevran. He had, in a manner of speaking, been flashing the Augur without knowing it, for several months.) “Obviously, I should be there as well. And I want you with us, Alim.”

“When? Can we do the next round of experiments? If we put it off much longer, we might have to start over with the previous one; nugs don’t live forever.”

“Yes, we can,” said the Architect. “A few months’ wait will not hurt anything. The horde is still decades away from Razikale.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Vapors off a brewer's vat": Think dry ice in a cooler, how "steam" comes off it. Thedas is probably actually capable of making dry ice at this time through magic, but I'm not sure Ancient Tevinter was, and then I'd have to look up how they'd be able to do it, and I am already teaching myself more than enough chemistry for this fic.
> 
> Not sure the "augur" pun works in whatever language they're actually speaking, but I couldn't resist.
> 
> Also, I nearly punched myself in the head when I realized that the Joining probably works because dragon blood. Like, drinking ordinary dragon blood is how you become a reaver. If you drink too much of it, you'll grow scales. It's got some kind of magic that partially turns you into a dragon. And then, if the Old Gods are dragons...basically dragons have to be made out of magic. Literal, living magic. Something like a powerful spirit that's also a dragon. And then, for the purposes of this fic, the Old Gods are very rare intersex dragons that have reached maturity as something like high dragons and are hibernating. Basically, the gender thing gives them mind powers. It makes sense on a symbolic level. So, theoretically there could be more Old God-type dragons, but I suppose it's possible that something about the creation of the Veil made it so no more could be born naturally. It's safe to say that, technology aside (because I don't want to have to research that, too), the Darkspawn Trio aren't going to try to engineer another proto-archdemon, because no one wants to be the asshole who condemned Thedas to even more Blights, especially since one of them is partially responsible for the original seven.


	16. Just Say No to Herbs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Shamelessly borrows A/B/O trope*
> 
> Also, sorry this chapter is late and has minimal editing. I had a funeral to go to, on Saturday (a former professor), and that delayed the writing a bit.

As they climbed toward the edge of the Frostbacks, far below the Hinterlands, up and down through ancient dwarven tunnels and newer ones hacked by darkspawn or the Legion, the knot of dread in Zevran’s stomach (or whatever was in its place, he thought) slowly grew. It was not simply that the Augur had seen him in those first months after his transformation; it was the thought that she might not have wanted to. It was also the thought that she might have wanted to see him, after all, and that the thought of being desired by a broodmother was not nearly so horrible as it ought to have been. Or even the thought of _being_ a broodmother, if he admitted it to himself, though the notion of such immobility alone ought to be alien to his very nature.

It had been several months since they had all arrived at the Tower of Ishal. Alim and the Architect had been trying out a variety of binding spells and omissions of bits thereof on animals, to no success—though they had determined that making a normal Disciple of a dragon was impossible, using the last of the Architect’s store of genuine Warden blood. The original binding relied on dragon blood, and dragons were thus unchanged by it. They were now trying to do something with the blood link between all dragons, but it had not worked, yet.

Meanwhile, Zevran had appropriated some of the alchemical equipment and was working on extracts and distillations of the Wilds’ Flower. Poisons had always been his thing. Lyrium intensified the anti-Blight effect, but had no effect on renal detriment in mortals that could not be explained by lyrium alone. Heating intensely weakened the salutary effects slightly, but made it no less toxic. The plant’s juices appeared to be slightly basic, which was annoying, because they were almost out of acids and salts, and they were hard to obtain. Yet another reason to recruit living mortals, Zevran had to admit. The root seemed to be the most potent part of the plant, which made sense, since that part had to ward off what of the Taint might be in the ground.

The real problem was that he did not know if the toxicity to mortals was inherent in the salutary compound itself, or if it was something else in the plant which happened to have similar solubility and anti-acidity. Perhaps they needed to obtain scholars, not Wardens. Perhaps whomever they obtained should be influenced to build full outposts in Serault and Val Royeax. For of course, they needed contacts on the inside. Humans, preferably. Humans would be less suspected and have more influence, it was just fact. The Wardens made a great show of equality, and up until the very highest levels did generally try to provide it, but there were always little things.

Zevran tripped, catching his foot on a crack in the stone floor, then scurried after Alim and the Architect, who were already almost leaving him behind, wishing his limbs would move faster. And that was what came of misusing the herb garden. But it was better than the alternative. Oh, he had made up to Alim, with a kiss, but they still had not done anything more than that. Other darkspawn, he discovered, had self-control. Other darkspawn only thought about sex when they seriously intended to do it. Zevran wondered if this extended to other mortal people as well, since before, he had never questioned if it was unusual to think about sex in great detail every time one was bored. Blame growing up in a whorehouse, that. Or blame the Crows’ training and orichalcum. Either sufficed for an explanation.

But anyway, now that he was working with the others, Zevran knew that absences for extended masturbation sessions would be noticed (and would count against him, in the Architect’s opinion), so when they had expanded the herb garden, Zevran had seized the chance to experiment with some of the produce. Darkspawn were immune to many mortal drugs and poisons—Zevran knew that the naturally born ones in fact entirely lacked several of the organs that those drugs and poisons worked on—but not to all, and eventually he discovered that a combination of valerian, deathroot, deep mushroom spores, and numbwort made it nearly impossible to get an erection. It also slowed his movements and blurred his vision a bit, but minor clumsiness—still attributable to not being used to having claws on his hands and feet—was preferable to real humiliation or being considered feral. He had a jar of the stuff with him, now, in his pack.

And now they had crossed some kind of peak in the underground path, and they were descending again, and Zevran knew, somehow (perhaps it was the Void), that they were almost there. This was confirmed when a pair of Awakened genlocks in unusually well-fitting armor appeared out of the shadows and saluted the Architect.

“She waits for you,” they said in unison. Flanked by the guards, the three turned darkspawn walked towards a rough-hewn door bored into dwarf-finished rock.

Zevran had been warned of what the Augur was. To see her was another matter. The bulk of her was once-human flesh, twisted and melted and solidified like slag from a furnace, and seething tentacles splintered out from that core like worms spilled from a bucket. Nestled in the heart of the mass was a semi-linked figure like a hag’s torso, the part of the flesh taken over by and shaped into the form of the soul of the Augur of Razikale. Zevran could suppress neither the horror any once-mortal being would know at that sight, nor the abortive stirring in his loins his Tainted nature and his very own peculiarities tried to rouse in him, even under the amor-bane.

“Greetings,” said the Augur, beckoning to them. “It is good to see you two again, after this time. And you have brought a new one! Zevran, they call you. Come forward.”

Zevran did, blanking from his face the fear gripping him. This was a broodmother, and this was a Magister, and this was the High Priestess of the Old God whom he was trying to save. Or what if he had been brought here for some horrific broodmother impregnation ritual he had been kept in the dark about…no, wait, that thought was appealing to him far too much, precisely because of the horror of it. And that led to the thing he was really afraid of, that she had seen him while he pleasured himself, unawares. That could lead to several reasons for why the Augur wanted him here, and none of them seemed like things that would ultimately end well for him.

The Architect and Alim seemed to think everything was all right, but…the Architect. Two magisters, and what did they want with a pair of elven ghouls? Incidental help with research, but also body slaves? Alim went along with it (and yes, Zevran knew he was sleeping with the Architect, and he could not blame him, that was how one appeased powerful men, nor was the Architect ugly, per se), but he was a mage, and from the south, and had not grown up in a nation that bordered Tevinter. Two magisters. He was here for Alim, but…so many magisters. If they failed, or if they did not, how would it end?

He was before the Augur now. He sensed, behind him, that tentacles blocked his escape. She placed her hand on his forehead, and appeared to concentrate for a moment.

“That is the easiest way to get the visual details,” she said to him, softly, as she released him. “And no, I have not otherwise been spying on you. That much of your mind is evident from your surface thoughts. I am not sure I could spy on you, if you did not wish to be seen. Calm yourself. I simply wanted to meet you.”

Zevran wisely decided not to tell her that mindreading was the opposite of calming. The ancient Magisters had been able to walk in others’ dreams, the legends said. And if the Blight amplified all things….

The Augur continued. “I wanted to know what manner of man was trying to save Razikale. Your skills, your insight. When the time comes, I may see Razikale herself through you. I hope you will be able to save her, then, but we have thought the Gods doomed since Dumat, and for sure since Zazikel—whose gift you have, the Architect says, of hiding in the Void’s shadow, hiding the twisting of your form. You are to try to save my god, but I will not punish failure, only lack of effort. I doubt that will be a problem.”

Zevran could recognize a veiled order. “No, it will not,” he said. And it would prevent a Blight, if it worked, so why would he disobey? And now there were no longer tentacles cutting off his escape. He bowed—always a good idea, around Blighted magisters—and returned to Alim and the Architect.

Alim, for his part, had not heard what the Augur had said to Zevran in private. He remembered the warning she had given him when he himself had first met her, not to ape Corypheus with his own song, and he guessed it must be something similar. But now Zevran returned, and the Augur spoke to him now, pitching her voice across the room.

“Surana, if I could ask you to scry me? I have a brood due, in a few weeks, and I was wondering if you could check, and how many of them you would predict to be mages.”

Alim had noticed her pregnancy, already, both by her current size and through the Taint, so now he reached out, scrying harder through the Void, numbering and touching the half-formed creatures inside her.

“Thirty-one,” he said at last, finishing his scan. “As much as I can tell, packed so close, they are normally developed. At least half a dozen should have magic. Again, they are packed close. You seem in good health as well, though of course I know less about what is normal for a broodmother than for her litter.”

“Is Zevran still young enough that the childer would attack him, when they are born, or not?” the Architect asked. “Because if he is not, I suggest we stay here, for that time, and take one or two with us, while they are still small enough to transport easily. You know one of our hurlocks was maimed, a few months back, in that unfortunate skirmish with a wild band.”

“There is still some risk,” answered Alim, considering Zevran, “but as long as he does not, say, wade into the middle of them, he should be fine. As for the journey to Ostagar, I know he is capable of subduing a single juvenile darkspawn without killing it.”

Zevran, listening, was alarmed. He was going to have to ration the amorbane. This was supposed to be there and back again. Why did the Architect have to complicate it?

“Why not return and come back?” he asked. “I mean, what would we possibly be doing, around here? It is only a couple weeks’ journey, and we could easily send just one of us back at the time.”

“We have already shut down those experiments which would be harmed by a few weeks’ wait,” said the Architect. “We will send a runner to the Disciples at Ostagar, so they do not worry, but there is no need to return, ourselves. Besides, the Augur’s complex is due for a structural assessment. It would not do for the ceiling to fall on her head.”

“And, meanwhile, I can tend to injuries among her darkspawn,” added Alim.

Broodmothers’ spawn often created small cities around them, and the Augur was no exception. A few were Disciples, mainly her personal bodyguards, hunters, and runners, plus a few tradesmen who had shown affinities for crafting before they were Awakened, but the vast majority were wild. Wild, but not unintelligent; darkspawn were always smarter in groups, and a broodmother was enough of a focus point to create something akin to a primitive civilization. That was how one got darkspawn smiths and miners and sappers and alchemists—crude, elementary ones, but they existed nonetheless. Between the Augur being the Augur and the Awakened darkspawn she had integrated into her complex, many of her wild darkspawn knew a few words, not simply alphas and emissaries (and, she also birthed an unusually high number of emissaries). The complex around the Augur did not have much metal or metal ore, which limited its weapon and armor output—the Architect’s Ostagar complex got their work, when it could, but often settled for somewhat inferior work from a multi-broodmother complex far into the Korcari Wilds, with Alim of course (and later also Zevran) negotiating those deals—but it produced a lot of less traditional darkspawn goods, such as chemical weapons, pottery, and even lamp oil and candles. In exchange for these, the Architect’s complex traded raw herbs (especially desired for poisons, since they came from the blighted soil of Ostagar) and medicines, as well as Alim’s skills and the Architect’s, well, architectural knowledge.

The Augur’s complex contained a couple thousand darkspawn, and was spread across an entire dwarven thaig. Zevran knew they really might occupy themselves for weeks.

He had packed a fairly large jar of the amorbane—it was the usual size he put the stuff in, mostly full, since it was not like he needed to take up space in his pack with food—but even taking the lowest dose that worked at all, he ran out in a little under three weeks. He would have made more, but none of the herbs they traded to the Augur included valerian or numbwort. And the Augur had not even had her brood yet. The Architect was having him note down the structural condition of the Thaig ceilings (since he himself was hovering in the air by magic, and needed his hands to cast that), and Zevran was getting increasingly shaky and hypersensitive, since his last dose two days prior, and the Architect’s voice dragged like needle points in his ear.

At last the assessment of this part of the thaig was complete, and they returned to their temporary quarters. These rooms had been the Architect’s permanent quarters, once, Zevran had gathered, before he and Alim had set up the research outpost at the Tower of Ishal. The Architect was now annotating Zevran’s notes, occasionally asking questions about illegible bits of his handwriting that were taking more and more of his concentration to answer as the hours wore on, and at the other end of the table, Alim was doing…something, Zevran did not know what, but it appeared to be mostly writing. And then the dizziness of the drug withdrawal and the rebound of what the drugs had been meant to prevent suddenly became too much, and Zevran flailed, fell off his bench, and curled into a ball.

Darkspawn do not get sick. They can be hurt, they can be poisoned, but they do not get sick. The Taint is a sickness in itself, and more powerful than any other miasma that might think of trying. (Save perhaps for red lyrium, which is merely another form of tainted blood, and no one had ever seen whether it could grow in the body of a darkspawn, because darkspawn are smart enough not to eat it.) It is alarming enough when a mortal passes out; it is truly bewildering and horrifying when a darkspawn does so. Knowing Zevran as he did, Alim’s first thought actually was of drugs, but of an overdose, not a withdrawal. But why, he thought, when all Zevran had been doing was inspecting the thaig? And he had not seen him take anything. He had been right there, with him, for several hours.

Of course, in the time it took to think this, Alim had reached Zevran’s side and was asking him about symptoms. Between pained noises, Zevran admitted his situation.

“You could have asked me!” exclaimed Alim, exasperated. “I was interested, if you were. And you couldn’t have just made something topical to, you know, numb the area?”

“Topical didn’t work. Putting it on turned me on, and then I couldn’t get off. And you and the Architect had this…thing about ‘instincts,’ and I could tell you two had been sleeping together, yet in a year, it never seemed that you did it…I thought I was abnormal, that other darkspawn did not want to do this, or only rarely.”

“It comes at a significant physical cost, it is true,” admitted Alim, “which I think you already know. But I want you, you know. I had been waiting, to make sure you wanted. Do you want me to help you, now? For us to?”—he gestured at the Architect. For while Zevran was definitely clutching his head in pain, the real reason he had curled up was somewhere around his midsection, and it was _obvious_ what it was, this close.

“Yes,” gasped Zevran. “Both of you. But you first.”

“He’s going to need water, and food,” said Alim, to the Architect. “All of us will, but especially him. They keep sheep here, for the Augur. Bring us a couple, preferably already Blighted ones.”

 Broodmothers were the only darkspawn that fed regularly. They could produce darkspawn childer for effectively forever, but only if given the mass with which to make them. The Hinterlands, under which this thaig lay, were farmlands, and if the occasional lamb went missing or a flock of wild rams was suddenly smaller, anyone would think it was wild beasts, and not the Augur’s Disciples. They tended the captured animals in a cavern adjacent to hers, and deliberately Blighted the select few that were next to be fed to her, to make assimilation of their flesh easier. They were also kept for the benefit of any injured darkspawn in the complex, however, and Alim was pretty sure this counted.

But until the Architect got back, there was Zevran to attend to. Humming a soothing note softly, Alim began to strip off the other ghoul’s clothing, and then his own robe and trousers. He stopped just long enough to ask “May I?” and receive a nod in return, and then closed his hand around Zevran’s cock.

After so long a denial of self-release or another’s touch, Zevran instantly erupted, spilling thick, black fluid over Alim’s hand. Even as he spurted, he bucked up into Alim’s grasp, chasing a continuance of pleasure even as he began to grow sensitive to the point of rawness. And then Alim bent his head down to Zevran’s groin and licked at where his spendings soiled both of them, and Zevran thought he might almost come again, with that sight. Of course it was too soon for that, but he still wanted almost nothing more than for Alim to continue licking him with that unnaturally long tongue, and to swallow down his length and tease him with those wickedly spiked teeth. He heard a voice speaking, and realized it was him, pleading for that. And Alim gave it to him, wrapping his tongue in a slick, wet spiral around his flesh, and then taking him to the hilt as his teeth scratched lines into his shaft in perfect pleasure-pain. His cock was still fully engulfed in Alim’s mouth, but that tongue snaked out and coiled itself around his balls, and that should not be _possible_ , and then its tip managed, just barely, to tease at his neglected hole.

Zevran’s legs kicked of their own volition, and he screamed as he rutted and came into Alim’s mouth, thrusting against needle-sharp teeth even though, _because_ they hurt. Alim drew his tongue back in and lapped at Zevran’s cock, drinking down both the ichor he had ejaculated and that which seeped from the tiny wounds scored into the length of flesh. And as Alim laved his flesh, he healed it, in a burst of tingling that made a shudder run from Zevran’s groin to his nipples.

He needed more. He had drugged this part of himself away for six months, and it felt like nothing could ever be enough. But it seemed Alim knew that as well, knew what needed to come next—for this was not much different from what they had done, as mortals, simply more drawn out; in many ways, what he liked was the same. He moved down to Zevran’s hole, bending him almost double, and began to lick there.

Zevran gasped and squirmed and panted as that long, strong, pointed tongue circled, stimulating thin skin over that ring of muscle, and then pushed through, writing inside him. It should be impossible for a tongue to go in that far, it should be impossible for anything that goes inside an ass to move and ripple so, and yet there it was. It was so intimate, this penetration, knowing that Alim must taste him, even there—and had the taste of him, of any of them, changed since they turned? It must have—and all he could do was take it, accept it, and beg for more. His world narrowed down to that tongue within him and the grip of filed claws on his thighs.

It was still not enough. It would have been enough for the first, or the second, but the third climax was always harder, and as good as this was, it lacked just the slightest bit of force or intensity he needed to make that arousal build, and grow, and spasm and spill over. But Alim seemed to know (perhaps, as Zevran realized belatedly, because he was gasping “Please,” “More,” and “Harder” at him), and he withdrew his tongue and replaced it with two fingers, shoving them in without preamble and only then casting a grease spell.

It was not an ordinary grease spell. Ordinary grease spells were for mortals, who would come once, maybe twice, and be done. They, here, were creatures who could fuck all night and into the next week, if they decided to make it enjoyable, instead of just bringing themselves off as many times as needed as fast as possible, so hard and quick that each clench of orgasm hurt. No, Zevran was going to be fucked over and over again, and Alim knew, once he himself got going, that he would not want (nor would have the brainpower to remember) to cast it again. He crooked his fingers against Zevran’s prostate, and cast a full quart of grease deep into his entrails.

Had Zevran still been mortal, this would have been quite painful, all at once, and would quickly have turned into a messy disaster. In darkspawn, though, digestion is not a thing, and the intestines are vestigial tubes, while the stomach is expanded into a holding tank for assimilating eaten live flesh. The grease would stay where Alim put it, and Zevran felt only a rushing fullness that was finally the stimulation he craved. He shook and spurted sticky black all over himself, cock untouched, moaning. Alim kept massaging his prostate all through it, then pulled his fingers out, with a slick ‘pop,’ and then stroked the grease coating them onto himself as Zevran clenched to make sure the rest of it stayed in, waiting for Alim to replace his fingers’ absence with his cock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, sorry to end a chapter on this note of suspense. It's nearly 4k, though, and that's already a bit long for this fic. I'm pretty sure there's 3k more of sex, in this scene. Next week!
> 
> I am seriously beginning to wish I'd majored in chemistry, with a focus on the history of chemistry. What the fuck is Thedas’ alchemy/chemistry doing right now? Have they got atomic theory? Have they discovered hydrogen? Do they believe in phlogiston or some magical equivalent? What’s going on in Serault and the U. of Orlais? How much would Zevran know, considering he learned most of his stuff in the early Dragon Age and has been doing mostly fighting, reliable/known poisons, and administrative stuff for the last 50-odd years? And this is for the sake of a monster sex epic, so I can't ask my dad about this!
> 
> Zevran's Void-y powers: Remember, I have the Madman of Zazikel as the first broodmother, even though Bioware is more likely to make that the Augur of Razikale. I chose void-stealthing as her ability, because Satinalia (originally Zazikel’s festival) has masks. Literally no other reason. I needed to get the chapter done on time. And even then, it wasn't done on time.
> 
> On the location of the Augur's thaig: They're not in Valammar. That's the next town over. Or a couple of towns over. So, kind of that general area, but not Valammar itself. Remember, neither the Architect nor the Augur were helping Corypheus during Inquisition. The Hinterlands is a pretty big place. Like, I know we all say that about the game, but the Hinterlands is really an even bigger place than that. Game Hinterlands is the kind of place I could walk across longways in maybe 5 or 6 hours, if I had a good pair of boots and didn't get killed by bears, Templars, smugglers, bandits, or panicked apostates.
> 
> And yeah, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing with all these kinks, except that it's damn useful that these characters aren't humans. And Zevran has issues, and is into a ton of shit.


	17. A Reunion of the Mind and Groin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alim and Zevran, doing it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for mentions of noncon (broodmother-related), aka taking a hard left into Zevran's issues. Also, this is entirely porn. It's not even done yet.

Alim had not attended to his own increasing need all this time, being so focused on Zevran’s, but now it was brought back to him full force, and he shuddered as he smeared grease along his aching cock. Zevran was stretched enough to prevent injury, and he remembered that he had liked there to be a little burn. Yet, he paused now, to take in the sight of the man debauched before him.

Zevran had always been pretty, pretty when Alim had met him as a young man; no less pretty, he had thought, as they had grown older and some others seemed to stop seeing it. He was still pretty now, transmuted into a Blighted creature. Those fingers, especially long for a turned elf almost delicate, and those perfectly curved claws. The arch of those lips, drawn back over conical teeth. His hair was gone, but even the shape of his skull was beautiful. His limbs were dark grey, where once they had been bronze, but no less lithe. (Alim had wondered, once, if the reason he himself was so much lighter grey than the Architect was due to the recency of his own turning. And then Zevran had turned, and he had realized that it was a function of what color one was as mortal. Alim was by far the lightest of the three.) And now, spread out and wanting, Zevran lay before him trembling with desire, hole fluttering as he sought to keep the grease in (and they would need all of it, Alim knew, from experience), covered in his own spend, and softly pleading for more. Alim had never been sure if what he felt for Zevran was the sort of love bards sang about in tales—or if that sort of love existed, for that matter—but he did love Zevran in many other ways for sure, and never more so, he felt, than in this moment. Reunion, after so long; they had been together, for the last year, and yet it had been as though there were a screen between them, until now.

And so Alim lined himself up with Zevran’s hole, but did not enter him, instead first bending over to kiss him on the lips. Only then did he ease himself into that tight slickness, and between the two, it nearly straightaway undid him.

Alim forced himself not to move, teetering there on the brink, as he panted in his desperation, lips inches from Zevran’s. Zevran reached up to toy with the ring in his right ear—and that was good, the Architect was the sort of (former) human to ignore a (former) elf’s ears except as something to do when he was being sucked off, and then Alim suspected it was only because he lacked hair—and then Alim moved, swiveling his hips as he thrust in and out, rubbing the head of his cock against the slick pressure that was Zevran’s insides. He would not last half a minute, that he knew, but it did not matter, he could go on. With Zevran, he could always go on. He could fuck him till his skin of his cock rubbed off and left him raw, and he would still want him, and would merely heal himself and continue. Zevran clenched around him, smooth and tight, a vise of oiled silk, and Alim felt the answering pressure build within himself. It grew, snapped taut, and as it released again and washed over him, Alim crashed his lips once more against Zevran’s, feeling Zevran bite his lip in return as he spurted deep inside him.

Alim could really have kept going, at the same pace, but instead he slowed down, rocking into Zevran just hard enough to feel it. Zevran was still playing with his earring with one hand, and stroking himself with the other. In response, Alim reached down to tug the gold bars through Zevran’s nipples, just to feel Zevran’s reaction around him when he did so. Zevran gasped appreciatively, and tried to arch his back, but he was bent nearly in half, being fucked on his back like that, so it did not quite work.

“Change of position?” suggested Alim.

“Riding you, or sideways?” asked Zevran.

“Riding, if you’re up to it.”

“Stop reminding me I still have a hangover, love.”

“Just fuck you until you forget, hmm?”

Zevran laughed. “Something like that. Now, can we do this without you pulling out?”

It turned out they could. Elven darkspawn were apparently very bendy. Alim rocked back on his knees, holding Zevran to him, and then sat like the letter W, before pulling his legs out in front and laying back. Zevran was visually impressed.

“If you can do that, I wonder if you can suck me while I ride you.”

That image made parts of Alim’s brain white out, but upon actually considering the practical implications… “That was all in the hips. I’m not sure my spine is up to it, with you sitting on me like this. I could try, but I don’t think either of us would actually enjoy it.”

“A pity. I suppose we must make do.”

And with that, Zevran rose on his knees and sank down, startling a gasp out of Alim at the sudden stimulation. His cock swung, glistening with leaked ichor, and Alim could see the tiny scars on the sides of the head, where a piercing had used to be.

“What happened to the piercing you had?” Alim asked.

“I had to take it out. After I turned, actually. It was too much stimulation, and I thought it might help my…problem, a little.” He saw Alim’s not-eyebrow raise in question. “It did, but not enough, obviously.”

Alim sighed, though it turned into a gasp as Zevran ground his hips down, at the end. “A pity. It was really good for electricity spells.”

“Well, putting needles in me does always make for a fun evening. If it’s you doing it.”

“I don’t suppose I’d trust the Architect to do that either. Perks of you fucking the healer, I’d say.”

“You’re the best fucking healer I know,” said Zevran, grinning through his multitude of teeth. Ah, participles.

“How many decades, and you’re still using that joke?” laughed Alim, stretching and bucking up into him. But he had missed this. The Architect was not playful. The Architect was never suggestive. Oh, his technique was impeccable, but he was solemn and grandiose, and sometimes one wanted just to laugh and play.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Zevran, noticing that Alim had gone silent.

“How you’re not the Architect, not like him at all,” said Alim, not wanting to lie. “He took me to the abandoned temple of Urthemiel, our first time, you know? Actually, you should probably see the place sometime, it’s pretty incredible, and I think he even cleaned up after us, but that’s beside the point. He meant it as some kind of romantic gesture, I think. I didn’t even realize until several weeks later, honestly. But it’s always that level of drama with him. It’s far from unpleasant, and I always have about fifteen orgasms, but…it’s always something has to happen, there has to be some grand reason, but you…you I can just ask. And me…you could have always just asked. Sometimes I’ll be busy, but it was like that, before we were…this—could it be like that, again?”

“Could you keep up with me, the way I am now, if I am not drugged?”

“Let’s put it this way: I will make an effort to try. Though, I wonder if something’s wrong with your nerve responses.”

“They’re the same as always, except everything is a bit more sensitive, and getting an erection does not work quite the same way it does for mortals. So it ends up being more of a problem.” Not that it felt like one to him, at the moment, riding Alim like this. Maker, why had he not tried finding anything to put up his ass, all this time?

“Still, even if it is a problem, you need a solution that’s less addictive and toxic.”

“I take it then that a deliberate orichalcum overdose to cause minor nerve damage is not an option, then?”

“Zevran, no. Even the Crows did that to you by accident. And now, I’m not sure that would even work.”

“Have you ever even given a darkspawn orichalcum?”

“No. And don’t.”

“You’re no fun!” said Zevran, mock-hurt.

“Guess I have to be punished for that, then,” replied Alim, matching his tone. “What would be a fair price, do you say?”

“A weighty question. Perhaps you should be required to grab my ass.”

Alim did so with both hands, laughing. “And what else?”

“Hmmm…yes, you should slide the fingers of your right hand into my asscrack to where we are joined, and do the electricity thing.”

“That’s the base of your spine. You’re going to go off like an Orlesian firework if I do that.”

“That is the idea, yes.”

Alim slid his right hand to Zevran’s cleft, resting the pad of his thumb on Zevran’s tailbone and his little finger on his own member. “Are you ready,” he asked, and when Zevran nodded his assent, he unleashed tingling electricity into the both of them.

Zevran tensed, one hand on his own cock and the other digging into Alim’s chest, transferring the electricity there as well, and came with a low, guttural cry. His ichor spurted forth onto Alim’s face, black against grey, then dripped down to the stone below. Inside him, he felt Alim’s release as well, mingling with the rest of the ichor and oil already in him.

“So…being a darkspawn apparently means it doesn’t sting when another darkspawn gets their cum in your eye.”

“It is basically blood, isn’t it? Or, not proper blood either, but whatever comes out when we bleed. The Taint, in liquid form.”

“Yes. Ichor, we call it.” Alim explained about broodmothers, and why darkspawn stamina existed. “They’re never impregnated, just Tainted. They sort of spontaneously reproduce, if they’re turned the right sort of violently. Not exactly a sexy subject.”

“I don’t know…it could be a good roleplay?”

This startled a laugh out of Alim. “Maker, I thought you were drugged when you wrote that, years ago!”

“I was. Very nice drugs, too. I still think that the not-real version of that sounds appealing. What can I say? I have a soft spot for being brutalized by a group of men who tell me I’m girly even for an elf.”

“And this is why I’m glad I don’t sleep anymore, because I used to have nightmares about that with darkspawn Templars. Well, the brutalized part, not the girly part. Mostly.”

“Now, now, Ser Darkspawn, don’t be so glum. Don’t you want to have your way with a defenseless elf maiden?”

“Later. Maybe once the Architect brings back that sheep. Multiple darkspawn men and feeding, for authenticity. But I just want to fuck _you_ , for now.”

“On our sides, this time, so I’m not doing all the work?”

“Yes, I could do to be able to move my hips.”

Alim did have to pull out for this one. Otherwise, Zevran would have had to turn around with his dick inside him, and that would not have ended well. Torn foreskin puts a damper on most people’s moods. (Though, as Zevran reflected, probably someone, somewhere, was at least conceptually into it.) Zevran situated himself atop some of the discarded clothing, and Alim crawled into position and angled himself to where he could get himself back in. It was slower, fucking like this, and harder to reach each other, but they could still look one another in the eye, and no one was getting squished.

Alim reached over to stroke Zevran’s cock (that, he could reach); instead, Zevran grabbed his hand, and, leaning forward, began sucking his finger. His tongue wrapped around the digit in spirals, and lapped at the palm. Alim tasted of stone-dust from the floor and ink, and the acid sourness common to all darkspawn. It was almost like licking his own hand; practically nothing differentiated the two. In their mortal lives, Alim had always smelled of infirmary soap (even when he was not employed at an infirmary), all elfroot and ginger and mint and tea tree oil, and sometimes the beeswax and lanolin he’d used to keep his hands from cracking in winter; and his skin had tasted of salt. Another thing they had lost, like light. But they were here, both of them, and Alim still moaned and shivered as he always had when Zevran sucked his fingers like this, even if his tongue was now longer and strangely-shaped, and those fingers ended in filed-down claws.

And it was strange how good it felt, just to be with another person, instead of just his own hand. There was so much more to touch, and to do, and it made arousal less of a horrifying, yawning need and more actually pleasant. Alim’s thrusts within him felt good, because he himself was not responsible for them. It also helped that Alim could summon grease, to prevent chafing. For all Zevran’s new abilities from the Blight, grease-summoning was not something he had figured out yet, or thought himself likely to, ever. Speaking of grease…Zevran unwound his tongue from Alim’s fingers, to ask for some to put on his own cock. It was starting to get a bit sore, and sore was not the kind of pain he generally liked.

“Sorry, I forgot earlier,” said Alim, casting into Zevran’s hand. “I just forgot about it anywhere that wasn’t your ass.”

“Forgot I couldn’t cast it?”

“Maybe a little of that, too. Although…”

“I think I’d have figured it out by now, if I could.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Alim, resuming thrusting. “Casting this from the Fade, yes. People have been casting sex grease since before the fall of Arlathan. It knows what you want, even if you’re a bit sloppy about intent. When you’re drawing half or more from the Void, though, less so. It wants to be thin oil, and a lot of it, the kind for burning things, since that’s what emissaries use it for, when they think that far ahead at all, which isn’t often, and it wants to be several gallons of it. You have to really think to get what you want, as if it were a more complex summon. Not too much harder, but you have to actually picture what grease is like, instead of just thinking ‘grease.’ Otherwise, you get twice as much as you want and thin. Not as difficult as actually trying to summon glycerin, mind you,” he added, pausing to rake his filed claws down Zevran’s thigh, “which is why I summon grease instead of glycerin—especially considering how easy it is to produce glycerin naturally in the first place.”

“Especially if you are summoning it inside my ass,” added Zevran, with a chuckle.

“Gods, yes. Don’t start by trying to summon anything into someone’s ass. The best case scenario for that is uncomfortably much of it. Worst case involves peritonitis, and I’ve seen that worst case. Seriously, I didn’t learn to cast grease internally until I was 19, and I’m a healer. Start by summoning into a bucket, if you try at all.”

“Noted,” said Zevran, rubbing grease under the head of his cock. “I will not attempt to summon anything into my ass.”

“Also, if you suddenly figure out how to cast electricity, don’t do it to yourself without supervision.”

“That’s what I have you for.” Zevran stretched out, toying with a nipple piercing with his non-greasy hand. “Some experienced electricity, please?”

Alim started his second-lowest level of current on Zevran’s balls, just a strong tingle. Of course, it trickled through to him as well. He trailed his finger up along Zevran’s shaft, and circled over the head—and this was where he’d used to use that piercing, that was missing now, to make a circuit just through the top half of the tip, to keep Zevran on edge until he moved one finger to the underside of the slit and sent the current through the whole of his genitals, whereupon Zevran almost always came. But for now, he had to be content with his own thrusting and with the less precise conductivity of flesh, to bring Zevran off for the fifth time.

Zevran was getting close, he could tell, from the little movements he kept making with his free leg, and if Alim was honest, so was he. So he turned up the electricity just a bit more, lit it up in his other hand as well, and brought it to where his own balls met Zevran’s taint. And there it was, the final kick that turned “pleasant sensation” into “actually going somewhere.”

This time, it was Alim who went over first. He fell back, taking one hand off Zevran’s cock to support himself, but it hardly mattered; he was still sending current through both of them. The electricity pulsed through him, wringing spurt after spurt from his cock, and his mouth started to go dry as he pumped more and more ichor into Zevran. And then, even with the electricity, it died down to just a weak pulse every several seconds, and Alim had to direct the electricity away from himself, as it became too much. But that meant it all went directly into Zevran (who had been leaking steadily, for the last minute and a half, watching Alim go off), and it surprised him over the edge, and he spurted long ropes of ichor into the air, gasping faintly.

They lay exhausted for a few minutes, muscles worn out from effort and electricity. Alim thrust into Zevran every so often, because neither of them was anywhere near done yet, but just barely enough to keep up a pleasant friction. If they could have gone to sleep, they would have.

And then a knock cut through their almost-doze. The Architect had returned, and he brought a large waterskin (which Alim gladly took and drank from) and a Blighted ram.

“So, how do you want to divide this?” the Architect asked Alim, referring to the ram.

“Start with the blood. And help me cast a stasis ward?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zevran's missing piercing: I literally just forgot I planned for his mortal self to have one. Oops.
> 
> Where did Alim see the worst-case summoning-into-ass scenario? Skyhold, 9:42 Dragon, while he was researching there in exchange for his services as a healer. It was some rebel mage kid. He had to do two lifewards and a toxin-removal spell, in succession, plus another to get the fever down, and even then it probably wouldn't have worked if Cole hadn't helped. Zevran hasn't heard about it before because a) patient confidentiality and b) Alim was too fucking tired afterwards to do more than mutter "Yeah." in response to Zev's "Hard day?" and flop into bed.
> 
> On the difficulty of summoning lube: The Fade is shaped by people and spirits interacting with it, so common spells should be easier to get the Fade to do for you simply because they're so common. At least, in my thinking. Obviously, the size of the spell and your own talents also have something to do with it, but still, if a spell suddenly becomes more common, it should get easier. The Void is probably similar. But, as stated, people have been using the Fade to cast sex grease since ever, whereas most darkspawn don't give a shit about lube. So, the Void has a lot less of an idea of how lube is supposed to work than the Fade does.
> 
> And no, Zevran is probably never going to be able to summon anything, at least not in the kind of quality to be useful. He might be able to make his skin a little oily, but probably not anything more than that. He's really just got the shadow thingy that's pretty much the in-game stealth ability.


	18. Various Uses of Mouths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Blighted sheep is prepared for consumption, with magic. A good deal of "staff" jokes. A surprising amount of psychoanalysis. Deliberately impossible blowjobs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please appreciate that Alim is entirely naked, with a boner, for all of the events of this chapter. (As is Zevran, but at least he's behaving nakedly.)

“Why not just a regular lifeward? That would keep it alive long enough for us to eat it,” asked the Architect.

“Because I think, if we use a stasis ward but also a spell of blood regeneration, which is designed to ignore stasis spells for obvious clinical reasons, we can have essentially all the blood we want, and might even be able to return the animal alive. Though, Zevran might want to eat it, afterwards, regardless. I actually would not mind truly eating, either. But,” continued Alim, “I can’t cast that without some help, and Fade spirits currently don’t like me that much. It’s a problem with being this corrupted.”

“All right. I cannot fault your logic. That is indeed less…messy than simply eating the beast now.”

“We don’t generally get to do this in a clinical setting, but it will be easier to cast the ward if we draw it first. Do you have any crayon-du-chant?”

“Yes, but you will have to extricate yourself from Zevran first.”

“I’ll live,” said Zevran.

Still naked, Alim took the proffered stick of lyrium-infused charcoal and began sketching a complex geometric pattern in a corner of the room, as the Architect held back the Blighted sheep. Zevran, remaining on the pile of now questionably-stained clothes, stroked himself leisurely, watching the muscles moving in Alim’s bare back and ass.

“Where the fuck did I leave my staff,” muttered Alim, finishing the glyph.

“Since I assume you do not mean the one between your legs, in the corner, to your left,” said Zevran.

“Must you?” asked the Architect.

“I thought you wanted to join in the fun?”

“I do, but I can still object to a certain…crudity.” The last word was Ancient Tevene, while those before it (and Alim and Zevran’s speech) had been in Common.

“Bawdiness is half the fun,” replied Zevran, stretching out with a seemingly unpracticed motion to lounge seductively. “And besides, the…staff between his legs is well worth pointing out, even though, I believe, both of us are quite well acquainted with it.”

“And if I straddle this, then I’ve got _two_ staves between my legs,” added Alim, having located his (completely literal) staff. At the Architect’s disapproving look he added, as an aside, “Be glad we haven’t got any dildos in here. We once kept this up for an hour, years ago, just to see if we could.”

“Are you ready to start the spell or not?” grumped the Architect.

“Yes,” replied Alim, getting into the ‘wide casting’ position, with his (literal) staff in his left hand (and his metaphorical one bobbing, disregarded by everyone but Zevran, halfway up). The Architect levitated the sheep over the glyph (it would not do to have it scuffing up the lines), placed one hand on Alim’s back to feed him mana, and Alim activated the spell.

After perhaps thirty seconds, there was a blindingly bright flare of green light. The Architect dropped the levitation spell, setting the sheep down, and Alim began the second spell, now kneeling and touching one of the sheep’s legs, since this spell targeted the marrow. This time, the energy flare was brilliant orange. Zevran told himself to stop looking directly at people casting, for the sake of his own eyes. Then Alim stood up, wobbling slightly.

“And this is why I usually try to avoid doing sex and major spells on the same day.” Alim considered the sheep. “It takes a few minutes for the regeneration spell to really work, but it shouldn’t hurt it if I take a quart or so, anyway.”

“Does eating actually help with mana burn, when you’re turned?” asked Zevran.

“Depletion, not burn,” corrected Alim. “I’m still standing. And, well, kind of. Blood magic.”

With that, Alim knelt again, pulling back the sheep’s head to expose its throat. He bared his teeth, almost a ring of needle-spikes, and bit into the large vein, sealing his lips over the wound. Blood poured into his mouth, half-blighted and heady and _warm_ in his mouth where he could feel it as only a living creature could be, and spilled down his throat as he swallowed, burning a trail of life all the way down to his stomach. He drank and drank, occasionally worrying the wound more as it began clotting.

Finally, he no longer felt thirsty. Alim pulled off of the beast’s neck, healing the wound as he went. He sat back on his knees, hands over his stomach, and focused on the few still-unblighted motes within him. The sheep’s blood transmuted at his will, and Alim felt his mana and energy surge.

It all was like wandering in a cold building for hours, hands and feet numb, and suddenly finding a hearth with a roaring fire; or traveling for a week on a dusty road with no inns, and finally reaching a town, and being able to wash in a soapy, heated tub. Comfort which one did not know one missed, until one once again found it. Why did he not do this more often? And the answer stood before him, looking at the bespelled sheep with a mixture of hunger and distaste. Perhaps the difference was less stark, when one had lived thirteen centuries. Perhaps by then the bliss was muted into a mere reminder of what one had lost. Or perhaps it was simply disgust at touching a common animal and eating it raw, from a man who had been raised in splendor and taught to cherish the arcane and control the physical.

Alim’s earliest memory was being held down in the dirt and licked by a Lothering dog. Until he had been stolen and locked away till he became indoors-pale and scholarly, he had run wild, chasing his clan’s chickens and curling up with neighboring freeholders’ sheep and cows for long hours as they chewed their cuds, shunning the village’s human children who threw grass at him and spoke strangely. And then after, he had become a healer. Common beasts were part of life, and the physical was the core and cause of it, and it was folly to pretend otherwise.

It was merely _convenient_ not to have to eat all the time, to be able to read or write or alchemize as much was one wanted to and never have to sleep or eat or drink water (save if the air was very dry, or at very long intervals) until one was _done_ , to go straight through without losing focus or having to do anything unpleasant or tedious. It did not mean that reading and writing and alchemizing were all one should ever want to do. This—he could do with feeling this more often. And yet he said that to himself, every time, and each time he forgot how it felt.

“Zevran, your turn,” said Alim, breaking free of his thoughts.

Zevran rose from his pile of clothing, bending and stretching with practiced grace and ease. After all, if he was supposed to be seducing the Architect, he might as well do it properly. He walked over to the sheep, making sure to wiggle his butt just a little, at each step, but subtly enough that it did not look intentional. Well, perhaps Alim would know, but Alim had seen him walk naked, before, as well as just in general, for several decades.

He knelt down in front of the sheep, with the poise of an erotic dancer, and paused. He had never drunk the blood of an animal larger than an extremely fat nug before, not counting his Joining, and he was not sure he could do this sexily. Actually, he was not even sure he could eroticize exsanguinating a nug, come to think of it. Unless, of course, the Architect was a fan of arterial spray and blood-smeared faces. Given the man’s disgust at the idea of darkspawn feeding, Zevran suspected either it was, or it was precisely the opposite. And then he remembered what Alim had said, about the man’s penchant for ceremony, and decided definitely the opposite. This was likely to end in him entirely ruining the mood, or giving the Architect a complex.

Still, he was thirsty and could not deny it. He bent his head and bit down on the barely-healed mark on the Blighted sheep’s neck. He felt his fangs break through skin and puncture the vein, a sensation familiar from years fighting and killing with a blade, but as if he had the knife attached to his teeth—but his teeth were daggers now, he reflected, chain-piercing needles. Of course, with them still in the wound he had made, nothing was coming out. But if he withdrew his teeth, there would likely be a mess…how had Alim avoided a mess, short of magic? Following what he had seen, albeit from across the room, Zevran sealed his lips around where he had bitten, before worrying his teeth partially free from the sheep’s neck. Blood trickled into his mouth, like water leaking from a waterskin.

It was not nearly the spurt he had anticipated—the spell must be responsible for that, he realized. After all, the animal’s heart was only beating perhaps fifteen or twenty times per minute. His teeth were also still partially stemming the flow. As he drank, a few drams dribbled out around his mouth, but not nearly so much mess as he had feared. And it tasted so much better than nugs or deepstalkers, so much richer somehow—perhaps it was the Taint in it—and it did not give out after a few mouthfuls, like with small animals, but kept coming, as much as he wanted. Zevran drank, rapturously, greedily, until his stomach felt waterlogged and the overabundance of it caused the Taint within him to stir his loins with renewed force. Pulling off, he clapped a hand over the ragged hole in the beast’s throat and nodded to Alim, who healed it. Zevran felt the blood stop pulsing beneath his palm.

He smiled, still kneeling there in well-fed contentment, fangs still glistening red in the dim light. Then, for he was not one to pass up an opportunity, he slowly licked his hand clean of blood, looking at the Architect and Alim all the while, diligently laving away every sticky, reddish smear and coiling his tongue around each finger.

Alim saw right through the show, knew it was a performance to disarm the Architect (knew that Zevran still did not trust the Architect even so little as Alim did, and he could hardly blame him), but all the same he could not help but be affected by the shameless eroticism of this display. Zevran was beautiful, always so beautiful, but changed into this ultimate form even more beautiful, and he was naked and hard and licking blood off his fingers. Alim desired him, as he always had and would desire him, to take pleasure from him and be used for his. So long as Zevran wanted him, Alim would be there, to play as he wished.

Alim glanced over at the Architect. The man was still fully clothed, alone of the three of them, so Alim could not judge his…state without more scrying than he was willing to do at the moment, but he had his features smoothed into artificial composure, which could only mean he was definitely enthralled by the scene before him. Doubtless someone who had once been a Magister in ancient Tevinter had enjoyed worse depravities on a near daily basis, but he could not have seen such a display in centuries—Alim had certainly never bothered to try to give him one—and Zevran was really that good at what he did. Turning his gaze back to him (for he did not want to miss a second of it), Alim watched Zevran weave his tongue between his ring and little fingers. Where normally Zevran almost faded into the shadows, where he seemed often as a part of the wall, lately, even when not trying to hide, now he drew attention as a lodestone draws iron filings. Alim had laughed at the idea of a seductor darkspawn; he laughed no longer. Instead, he fought the urge to stroke himself wantonly, as his cock bobbed higher against his stomach and leaked thin, grey-black fluid onto his skin.

Eventually, Zevran reached the point where further finger-licking would have just been absurd and rose to his feet in one fluid motion, subtly thrusting his hips as he un-knelt. “Aren’t you going to have a drink, too?” he asked the Architect, somehow managing to gesture at the sheep and his own crotch at the same time.

“I do not need to,” replied the Architect, still looking at the naked elf with that expression of artificial composure.

“You probably should, though,” said the other naked elf in the room. “I assume you will be taking part in the activities Zevran and I are going to be continuing, and it would be regrettable if you became ill or frenzied during them. Did you even eat properly, after you turned him, in the months since?”

The Architect shot Alim a withering look and muttered something along the lines of _“‘Assumo’ qui dicit est asinus,”_ but crossed the room and drank briefly from the beast as well, looking utterly put out all the while.

“Are you satisfied, _healer_?” he asked annoyedly as he looked up from the sheep’s neck, blood still smeared on his face.

“I’m healing it, already, stop strangling it with Force! Just because you didn’t want to get your hands messy, I swear…”

“Surely it’s not that unpleasant, is it?” asked Zevran, trying to calm the Architect. “I find the blood quite delicious, myself.”

“ _Blood_ is nothing to be squeamish of, as long as it does not get anywhere too inconvenient and has not yet turned rotten. I have stood amidst rivers of it without the slightest perturbation. Putting one’s mouth on a common animal and eating raw flesh like a savage, however, is abhorrent.”

Of course, it hung in the air that they were all Blighted creatures and even more abhorrent, and yet here they were, still living, of their own will, and even in each other’s company, and copulating or about to copulate with each other. They were past abhorrence. But Zevran and Alim had both gone into the Deep Roads already having given up life and mortality, when the Architect had been driven there, brought down in the midst of glory and soured victory, and somehow it seemed he still clung to it, to a life unfinished. Their fate, and his disaster.

“Well, then, stop thinking about it, and do something more pleasant!” advised Zevran, deliberately cutting through the prevailing mood. “You are in a room with two naked elves. In such a situation, most people find more diverting things to do than be dissatisfied with slightly regrettable food.”

“That is true,” admitted the Architect, and some of the tension and static went out of the air of the room. And he had fed, and thus must feel better than he had in months, despite himself. Alim could already see some of the tension lessen in him.

“Well,” prompted Zevran, kneeling on the discarded clothes pile and stretching invitingly.

“You’re the only one still wearing clothes,” pointed out Alim to the Architect. A thought occurred to him. “You do want to do this, right? If you’re not into Zevran, we can just do this on our own, and thank you for the sheep.”

“I am definitely interested. I just did not see the point of removing them earlier.” As he spoke, the Architect began to untie the belt of his robes. He wore nothing underneath, as was his wont. He folded the belt and garment, and placed them neatly on the table. It was a quirk of his, Alim knew: the Architect had no qualms getting stone dust or soot or ink or herb juices or blood on his robes, yet he would not actually put them on the floor.

The Architect turned around, now fully naked, and Zevran made a face of appreciative surprise. He had often had to pretend to be impressed, with marks—and yes, if he were being honest, the Architect was one; he just wanted the man to think he was more useful than feral and sex was probably the best way to do that, though for a darkspawn he was more than handsome enough to make it fun—but the Architect’s cock was genuinely impressive. It was at least the full span of Zevran’s fingers, thumb to little finger, and it was still completely flaccid. Maybe it was the sort that did not get much bigger, but it would still probably grow a little.

The Architect eyed the pile of suspiciously stained clothing that Zevran was still kneeling on, and sat down the table’s bench instead. Zevran leaned forward on all fours and crawled, catlike, over to him. Curse the Antivan Crows of old, he thought, but it felt good to put their lessons to use. Reaching the Architect, he pulled himself up using only the strength of his core and placed his hands on the Architect’s spread knees, looking up at him with his mouth open. He cocked his head to one side and raised his hairless eyebrows in question; the Architect nodded “yes,” and Zevran licked his flesh into his mouth. Goodness, it was downright useful to have a tongue that could coil around a large cock three times over.

The Architect shivered, and Zevran felt the flesh wrapped in his tongue grow a bit thicker. That was going to be interesting to get into his ass, later. At least, he hoped it would go into his ass, later. If the Architect was anything like him or Alim, that would happen, if only to keep from getting bored. He should be fairly stretched already, from Alim fucking him earlier, but did darkspawn regenerative powers make one’s ass tighten faster? Well, he would not know until he tried. And the Architect still was not fully hard yet, despite the best of his extremely formidable skills. Earlier, Alim had licked at him for something like half an hour before he’d gotten himself started… Zevran wondered if he himself was somehow abnormal, needing drugs to be able to do anything other than fuck. Perhaps it was the Taint doing something to what the orichalcum had done to his nerves; he recalled hearing of a man getting priapism from a crushed spine, and that was not this and he did not even know if it was true, but the principle had to be similar. He wondered if Alim could do something about it. And he kept licking and sucking at the Architect’s Blight-scarred cock, as all these thoughts clattered around in his head.

The Architect was finally fully hard, and gripping the bench tightly with a grey, long-nailed hand as he struggled to keep his face calm. Zevran glanced to the side; Alim was standing there, watching them, stroking himself. Zevran motioned him to come over.

Alim did, and Zevran gestured “down”; he took the hint, and knelt beside Zevran. Zevran scooted over to the left a couple inches, hooking the Architect’s leg over his shoulder to make room, and Alim did the same on the other side. And then they both leaned forward, and wrapped both their tongues around the Architect’s cock.

Zevran felt a tingle in his tongue, as Alim drew a sparking, blunt-clawed finger along where the three of them were joined. Then Alim moved his hand and the spell down to the Architect’s balls, across his perineum, and almost to his hole—the tingling lessened, for Zevran, but never quite stopped—and the Architect finally came for the first time, spraying black ichor across both their faces. Alim continued the electricity against the Architect’s rim and kept licking and twisting his tongue around his cock, while Zevran unwrapped himself from the entanglement and began licking the Architect’s ichor off Alim’s face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, I think the Architect's insistence on minimizing "crudity" is because he was the High Priest of Urthemiel, god of beauty. Orgies are supposed to be solemn ceremonial occasions, or something. Bawdy jokes are for processions after weddings, and even then there's like 6 standard ones that you yell at the couple and you're not really supposed to improvise. People making jokes during sex for fun? _Blasphemy._
> 
> In general, the Architect is kind of a trip to write. He's this underleveled Dark Lord Fussbudget. But he also used to be a major religio-political leader and fucking broke into the Fade and the Black City, back 13 centuries when the Fade was actually still pretty strong, overall, and not wearing out all over the place like it is by the Dragon age. And he used an unfathomable amount of blood and death magic to do that. I have a very hard time getting a read on him. I can usually tell what Alim and Zevran are thinking, but I have to puzzle out the Architect. Most of what I get are Alim's insights, which are from stuff he's seen the Architect do or say, not from actually being in his head. Writing is weird.
> 
> Also, someone said the prehensile tongues were hot, so I wrote more of them =D


	19. Various Uses of Former Elves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More darkspawn banging. Zevran's brain just won't stop being ridiculous. Alim does literal magic with his metaphorical staff. The room they're doing this in is so not designed for sex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry there aren't quite as many prehensile tongues this time! Still a little, but not as much. You get the Architect's monster dong instead.

Zevran had already come five times, and he had gotten into that headspace of performing rather than feeling, so he almost did not notice when Alim cupped his cock and balls in his other hand, covered in electricity as well, until he came almost before he was aware it was happening—he had not been bothering to try to hold back, considering that, as a darkspawn, that was kind of pointless, and also considering that he was pretty sure he was going to get fucked, here, not actually actively do any fucking. The force of it was like a punch in the gut, and he let out a long, liquid moan that echoed off the stone walls without even knowing that he was doing so. Alim smiled a bit, pleased at this result, and brought his ichor-covered hand up to Zevran’s mouth so he could lick that, too, turning the electricity in that hand down to a minor tingle.

This was for Zevran and his need, even if Zevran himself did not entirely seem to realize that was so, now that the Architect had joined them, and if Zevran wanted to put on a show, Alim would help him. It was nice to have a third, again. They had always worked better with a third, or sometimes even a fourth. It was more effort, true, but also more support, since all of them had _Issues_ , with a capital I, and the cowshit was more likely to hit the threshing machine at the same time for two than for three or four. And they had not really had a third since…back when Alim was on research leave with the Inquisition, really. Well, there had been that couple in Weisshaupt city, that had been a regular thing, but only three or four times a year. Having the Architect and Zevran in the same triad was not really the best idea, but they could make it work. They needed to. Alim could not bear to lose Zevran, and it would be madness to make an enemy of the Architect, and the Augur and their combined forces with them. Alim knew that Zevran knew that. He did not know if Zevran knew that the Architect’s dominant posturing was mostly just that, especially when it came to sex, just a tangle of inhibitions and expectations of what it meant to be a human man and a Magister, and Alim wondered how to make Zevran believe that. He considered trying to flip the scene and dominate the Architect, but he knew both of their tells, and did not think either of them wanted that, this time. Maybe the next. Knowing Zevran, there would probably be a next, especially if Alim could not figure out what was wrong with his nerves on the first try. Darkspawn stamina was a thing, but it was not usually that easy to get it started. Zevran really should have told him earlier; he was worried something was actually wrong. Probably something related to orichalcum.

Zevran had finished licking Alim’s hand off, Alim noticed, and was now using his Blight-lengthened tongue to lick the rest of the Architect’s ichor off his own face, before it got too tacky. He was reaching most of it, but there was still some on his ear, and the top of his head. Alim unwrapped his tongue from the Architect’s cock and began licking ichor out of Zevran’s ear. Spent ichor tasted almost neutral, to him, like their skin, but moreso. There was a little difference between each of them (the Architect’s was stronger, almost like their blood), but not much, certainly less than there was between mortals, even ones who used the same soap and scents. Zevran had used to wear rose, clove, and sandalwood. Alim wondered if that would even smell the same to him, now, if they could get some. He wondered for a moment what the Architect had used to smell like, in life, and then decided that was a useless train of thought. He finished cleaning off Zevran, one hand still spark-teasing the Architect, and then pulled his tongue back into his mouth, folding it into position for speaking.

“Zev, what do you want? Do you want us to take you?” He almost added ‘dear’ after ‘Zev,’ but decided that might make the Architect twitchy again. It was best if he himself directed this, Alim thought; he could read Zevran far better than the Architect could, would know the difference between performance and desire, and the Architect getting ideas of his own about this would probably end regrettably. He had thought it was a good idea to fuck on mosaic floors, after all. Alim’s knees and everything else had hurt for days after that, darkspawn regenerative capabilities and all, once the sex haze had worn off.

“Maker, yes!” said Zevran, sounding more desperate than he really felt, but he was pretty sure Alim could tell the difference. Sex could be a game, and they had always been a marvelous team. Ulterior motives did not mean a good time could not be had by all.

“Hands and knees, on the clothes pile,” suggested Alim; it was not quite an order. That would probably be the easiest position for this. The Architect was far taller than Alim, so simply lifting Zevran’s ass was not going to be enough, this time, even if Zev did prefer being on his back, so his hands were free for emergencies.

Zevran crawled over to the clothes pile again, with the same slinking motion he had used to leave it before. He found a comfortable spot and settled into it, presenting his ass in the air towards Alim and the Architect.

“I fucked him full of me earlier,” said Alim to the Architect, “but he’s probably gone and tightened up again; you know how fast we recover. Help me stretch him open.”

The two of them descended on Zevran’s ass. The Architect folded his claws out of the way and began fingering Zevran with two knuckles, while Alim licked around his opening and the Architect’s fingers both. Zevran moaned appreciatively, writhing around them, and Alim was pretty sure that most if not all of that was unfeigned.

The Architect withdrew his fingers and prepared to replace them with his eager cock. It stood proudly, now that it had gotten going, nearly three palm-widths long, thick enough that Alim’s fingers could barely have closed around it, flushed nearly black with arousal and dripping a thin stream of ichor. He cast more grease into Zevran, to mingle with the grease and ichor already within him, drawing a low moan of pleasure from the turned elf, and then sank slowly into his ready ass, gasping slightly at the tightness.

Zevran had thought he was more than ready; instead, he had to deliberately relax himself, and even then it still stretched and burned. Maker, the Architect’s cock had to be nearly as big around as Alim’s hand! He did not mind the pain, quite the contrary, but he had not been expecting it. He did not have much time to think about it, however, because as soon as the Architect had found his rhythm, Alim was kneeling before him, offering his cock to Zevran’s mouth. Zevran gratefully, desperately opened his mouth to it and sucked, pulling it in deep and letting it fuck his throat raw. It was all overwhelmingly much, and he needed it.

The Architect came first, spending himself in the tight heat of Zevran’s ass, grunting slightly and throwing his head back. Alim was not far behind him, sent over the brink by the feeling of Zevran swallowing around his cock and by the sight of the Architect’s spend beginning to leak out of Zevran’s ass, fucked out of him as the Architect kept thrusting even while he was still shooting off inside him.

Zevran moaned around the cock pulsing in his throat, stripping his own cock with one hand in an effort to force his own climax as well, but it was not quite working. He had already gotten to come several times more than the others, and truth be told, he was still a bit ill for want of his drugs. The blood and Alim’s healing had helped, but only time could really fix it. He felt like he was close, so close, but actually getting there was going to take several more minutes. Still, he managed to squeeze hard enough that a wave of pain went through his cock, and it forced out a spurt of what would have been precum if he were mortal. If he were mortal, the amount would have been enough to be mistaken for an actual climax. Zevran hoped it was convincing enough not to make the other two disappointed in their performance (well, mostly the Architect), and decided to stop trying to come for a bit and just enjoy the sensation of the Architect’s ridiculous cock sliding in and out of his ass.

Maker, that cock was ridiculous. He was pretty sure his own had not gotten bigger when he turned. Well, perhaps a little—though he had not measured it, and it was entirely possible that his fingers had just gotten thinner—but it was still proportional. Alim’s seemed to be roughly the same as well. Zevran wondered if some of the cock-enlarging spells in Nevarran novels about ancient Magisters were real. Perhaps it was some secret blood magic rite that no one knew about because Andraste had not wanted Magisters to feel proud of themselves. Or maybe the High Priest of Urthemiel was chosen via dick-measuring contests. Zevran suddenly had a vivid image of a sacred stone slab with inch-marks cut into it and a solemn procession of mage acolytes one by one approaching it with their…staves in hand. He snorted with laughter, and accidentally nicked Alim with his teeth.

Alim yelped and jumped, not being into sharp pain in the cock the way Zevran was, which of course only made it happen three times as much.

“What on earth?” asked the Architect, from behind Zevran’s head.

“Sorry—still not used to my teeth,” said Zevran, once his mouth was untangled from Alim’s dick. No way was he admitting the actual reason.

“I am slightly alarmed that I let you suck me earlier, with that known.”

“It’s…uh!...a little harder to concentrate on…technique, when someone is ploughing my ass so hard I can feel the impact all up my spine.” And with something that could not have possibly fit, if he were mortal, at least not without getting an entire hand in first (in fact, he was wondering just how much his innards had changed, in the last year, that he could breathe while being fucked by _that_ ), but he was pretty sure a man so…gifted by Urthemiel probably hated having it remarked upon. It was probably much like how women with large breasts usually wanted them smaller, if only to make finding corsets easier.

“Well, then, I will be sure to only let you fellate me when your ass is unoccupied,” replied the Architect.

“Not occupied by a person,” countered Alim, who had finished healing himself and was stroking himself back to full hardness. He had not gone completely soft, despite actual lacerations to his foreskin, only to half-mast. “He’s quite lovely when he has a plug in his ass and you tell him to suck you and not touch himself. Especially if you do this little spell to make the plug vibrate just a bit less than what it would take to bring him off just from that.”

The air rushed out of Zevran’s lungs in a harsh pant as the memory of _those_ times hit him with a surge of arousal, and his cock dripped ichor onto the floor. Alim, Maker bless him, was not just playing his game, but also calculating his moves to devastate the both of them. This was what he had missed, in bed, in politics, in battle, for so many years; his right hand, there to support him, directing lovers or diplomats or enemies to both their best advantages, setting up the room so Zevran could finish it off (or be finished, depending on the situation at hand). There had been others, of course, in the years since, but none who could fill all those roles combined, none whom he trusted quite as much. And now he had _him_ again, and could sink into that well of trust; he had forgotten just how it felt to mentally relax like that. A nagging voice in the back of his brain still clamored about what if he was dead and had been since that glyph activated and this was all just some demons trying to eat his spirit, but he pushed it aside. The press of his knees against the clothes on the floor certainly felt very real, and he was pretty sure his mind could not have come up with someone so fantastical and condescending as the Architect.

The Architect was apparently just as affected by Alim’s words as Zevran was, for he felt the hands grabbing his hipbones tighten and their claws leave tiny cuts on his lower stomach. Instead of shying away like most would, Zevran leaned into the sharp edges and fucked his own hand all the harder. He tried to thrust back onto that monster cock splitting him open, but the Architect’s grip was like iron, and for all his effort Zevran could not move his hips a finger’s width. He still squirmed as best he could, trying to get those claws to cut him open a bit more.

“Keep talking,” he gasped, looking up at Alim from where he leaned forward on the arm he was not masturbating with—he was not even bothering with trying to hold himself up anymore. “Tell him how I like being fucked.”

I was a wonder that that did not sound like a script, something out of a bad romance novel. It probably should have made the Architect suspicious, if he actually knew much of what Zevran was—how much did he know, wondered Zevran; how much had Alim told him?—but apparently in Tevene, it worked. And ‘oblivious’ could practically be the man’s middle name, Zevran had found. (He wondered how the Architect had gotten and kept a high priesthood in Ancient Tevinter, whether it was an inherited position, or whether it really was a dick-measuring contest. Who had been his right hand, and his left, back then? Their names were probably lost to history.) This was an old role for him and Alim; the whore and the pander. A little different this time—probably it would seem more like ‘elven slave and obsequious client Laetan’ to the Architect, if he could place the dynamic at all—but the underpinnings were unchanged. Alim led and offered, and Zevran was exactly what the Crows had made him to be, minus the part where he had generally been obligated to murder his conquests. The reason he and other Crow _mieleros_ were so effective was that they were never (or rarely ever) faking; they were trained to want almost everything. Zevran had never entirely succeeded in stamping out that kind of training.

Alim took his cue and kept talking, still stroking himself. “Well, as I said before, he loves having his ass filled. We used to have this plug, the size of my fist”—that was an exaggeration, it had been nearly two finger-widths less in diameter, they had measured the base once and compared it to Alim’s knuckles—“made entirely of steel, and it was always a treat to put it in him and have him just wear it while he normal little things. All the things one does around the house, plus checking on any experiments we kept at home. He would be whimpering with need all the while, just like he is now, but would just keep doing as he was supposed to. And then when you took the plug out, it would be actually hot from the inside of him, and he would be so slick and loose when you put your cock into him.”

It was a slight exaggeration. They had actually only done that once; Zevran had needed healing after, since he managed to pull a muscle doing chores with a large hunk of steel in his pelvis. Thereafter the steel buttplug of questionable choices had been relegated to actual sex only. But right now, Zevran did not even care. He whimpered and moaned with abandon, rubbing his cock and balls with the slick of his own ichor, feeling the heat and pressure build up inside him. A couple more minutes of this, and he would be splattering the garments below him again.

Alim continued. “He also is a slut for pain, if you haven’t noticed. Your claws are cutting him, and he just keeps writhing against them. I’m not sure you’ve even noticed how tightly you’re gripping him, and he hasn’t so much as cried out, because he likes it. I have often had cause to be thankful I am a healer, while fucking him. This one time, I put half a dozen needles through his foreskin, and he cried as he came all over himself. I didn’t even have to stroke him, I just tweaked each. single. pin. once. He used to actually wear a gold bar through the head of his cock, and I put it there—he hasn’t got it now, because he’s so much of a slut that he couldn’t do anything but fuck if he kept it in, once he turned, but I was with him earlier and the scars from it are still there, on his cock, if you want to check. Two little dots, one on each side of the upper half of the head, and he bled so beautifully for me when I gave them to him.”

The pressure in his groin boiled over, and Zevran came with a low cry, collapsing even further onto his left arm and spurting anew over the soiled clothing, as he dug the half-sharp edge of one claw into his cockhead.

“Change of position?” he asked, once he could speak properly again. “This is starting to be hard on my knees.” The pile of discarded clothing was not exactly a proper mattress, after all.

“What’s one we haven’t done yet, today? Both of us in your ass at once?”

“As amazing as that image is, I do not think that would be enjoyable for any of us. Have you seen him? His cock is almost the size of my wrist.”

“Perhaps you could take a turn at his rear, and I will use his thighs.”

“That sounds good,” said Zevran a little breathlessly, craning his neck upward from where he lay sprawled out, held up only by the Architect’s fucking. “Thigh fucking is definitely good. When I was a young man, I used to be able to come from just that—well, the first time in a night, anyway. While on orichalcum, though when wasn’t I, back then. Still definitely a yes, regardless.”

“On the bench?” asked Alim. There really was no other place to do it. A chair with springs or a small hammock really would have been ideal (especially since he suspected Zevran did not want to have to move much, if he could at all help it), but neither of those was at hand. Perhaps they could set up a sex hammock later, back at Ostagar.

They had forgotten to account for the Architect being tall, and most of that being in the legs. Alim and Zevran sat on the table, not the bench, with Zevran in Alim’s lap, facing forward. The Architect stood. Once Zevran was firmly seated on Alim’s cock, the Architect lifted his thighs up and slid his cock between them—casting a little more grease, to prevent chafing—and thrust not just against Zevran’s inner thighs but also against his cock and balls.

Alim could not move much, since he was squished against hard wooden furniture, and he felt like he was letting Zevran down, that way, but the little twitches and squeezes Zevran made around him were definitely enough to keep things interesting, on his end. Needing to contribute something to the activities, Alim started some electricity. It was hardly a new trick, but it always felt good. It was also something even most mages were not skilled enough to do; in fact, the Architect had once told him, during sex, that even in Ancient Tevinter ‘few even among the Magisterium could have afforded one such as you.’ Alim had nearly kicked him out of bed, since he had not agreed to play the part of ‘elven whore’ with a Magister, but it was rather nice for his ego, all the same. It was nice to know there was something of his barbaric, southern magic that the Architect considered skilled, for once. Tevinters, always underestimating and devaluing healers, and then being astonished when they did not have the precision to do their tricks.

Reaching around, Alim pressed a weak trickle of electricity into the base of the Architect’s spine, and then once he had that steady, he started an equal current from his own cock, which took much more concentration. Casting could be done from anywhere in the body, but it was almost always hands, in practice; sometimes feet or elbows or knees for some of the newer styles of close-range magic fighting taught in the Colleges, or sometimes the mouth for tricks like breathing fire, but most mages thought and cast with their hands. It had taken Alim years and many, many minor burns to the crotch to get this trick right.

But, seeing the effect it had on the Architect and Zevran, Alim was glad for all the excruciating practice. He had never shown this trick to the Architect before—to be fair, they fucked pretty rarely, perhaps twice a year—and he could see the man’s eyes widen, as he felt a current from two sources while Alim’s second hand was very obviously grasping the wooden, nonconductive table. At the same time, Zevran moaned and clenched around him, feeling the current inside him, right through his prostate, and Alim focused harder and kept up his efforts.

The Architect rubbed more and more desperately against Zevran’s legs, as Alim shot sparks into his spine and then also into his rim, and finally he thrust all the way between Zevran’s thighs once more and came, spurting ichor all over Zevran’s cock and stomach. Alim kept the electricity up, and the Architect kept coming for close to a minute, as waves of sticky liquid dripped onto Alim’s legs and the floor below. Alim finally removed his other hand from the table and began stroking the other two’s cocks together, drawing gasps and moans from the both of them, as he himself began to approach climax once again from the sparks running through their joined flesh.

They would have to move again, after he did, Alim decided, still keeping up the electricity and trying to thrust his hips despite effectively having two people on top of him. Not only could he not move, but his legs were going numb from the edge of the table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This sex scene just keeps on going, dear Maker. It turns out it takes longer to describe three people doing it than two. I am 98% sure it'll finish up in the next chapter, or at least the sex part will. Idk about the eating the sheep part. They will do that, for Zevran's benefit.
> 
> Also, the posting schedule might get a bit weird for the next few weeks. My parents, whom I live with, are trying to sell our house, so I have to clean half the house every couple of days instead of writing. Today I had to clean things with a magic eraser until it fell apart, and that was about when I fled to the coffee shop I'm sitting in now. So, I don't know about whether I'll have another chapter on Tuesday--obviously, this one is late as heck. Plus, I want to work on a couple of one-shots: One about a dude getting banged by giant spiders (based on an obviously Tolkein-inspired fantasy I had when I was like 13 that I remembered last week), and one crackfic for Rhapsody in Ass Major's "Page Six" that I've been meaning to do for the last year. And then I need to actually outline what's going to happen in this fic after like ~3 chapters from now and figure out what to name some new characters. I'll try for normal posting, but it may not happen for a couple weeks.


	20. The Inevitable Disassembly of the Sheep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ridiculously long sex scene finally finishes. A sheep gets eaten. The most extended eyeball vore joke you've ever seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gore and animal death warning for this chapter. Also, I have entirely given up trying to keep a serious tone. It's impossible, with Zevran around.

Some hours later, they ended up with Zevran on his back on the clothes pile, legs bent, as Alim fisted him. The Architect sat on the table bench, still watching intently, but mostly deflated. Zevran and Alim were fairly done as well, but Alim had insisted that forcing a few more orgasms out of Zevran was probably a good idea, just to prevent his…problem from coming back, and Zevran had agreed. Besides, even though it hurt by now, it felt so good. Alim had given him water between each of the last few, and all Zevran had to do was lie there and enjoy the electrified hand inside him.

He was not really hard again, properly—darkspawn stamina had found its limit, for him anyway, though he wondered if that would change as the years went on—but he could feel the energy building inside him, sensation thrumming in his core as the sparks hammered at his nerves. It would probably take a good half-hour, this time, the last time, but he would get there, eventually. Would spurt one last time, before _hopefully_ getting a few days of peace, perhaps even long enough to return to Ostagar and to his herbs, or even for Alim to figure out what was going on with him and fix it.

Alim concentrated on the slow rhythm of thrusts and electricity, making sure to keep his fingers curled in. This had been so much easier, before he had claws. Perhaps he should make a special glove for this, out of leather—that would be durable enough, and Zevran liked leather. But then he would not be able to use electricity. But he did have two hands. Decisions, decisions…Alim slowly twisted his wrist, rubbing his knuckles over Zevran’s prostate.

Zevran writhed, gripping the ruined clothing, kicking his legs out, as the slow movements of that hand absolutely devastated him. He felt as if he were on that edge, falling over it, but stuck somehow, kept from flying like a raven tied to a perch. He was pretty sure he was crying (without tears, since darkspawn did not have them, moisture being too precious), even as he moaned and begged for more. Looking down at himself, he could see ichor leaking from his nearly limp cock in a steady trickle, forced out by the pressure on the gland inside him, that lovely pressure that was driving him mad. Well, if the electricity did not do so first. Indeed, without the electricity, he would not have been able to come the last few times at all. Zevran wondered if Alim would have to brute-force this one out of him, fill his nerves with lighting till they were loaded beyond what nature could force them to handle, if each orgasm required a higher and higher threshold of organic current to trigger. He was sure he had hit the limit of what any mundane stimulation could cause even a darkspawn body to generate, about two rounds ago.

Alim had never heard such sounds out of Zevran before—he was pretty sure no mortal throat could make them—but they were interspersed with pleas and encouragements, so he tentatively accepted them as good ones. He amped up the current a bit. This was starting to take some effort; it was the duration, not the amount, and he had been running the spell for hours. The Void, though, replenished his mana at an astonishing rate. Maybe it was simply how the Blight permeated every one of his cells, or maybe it was another part of darkspawn stamina, or perhaps it was that so few casters drew from the Void—as if it were overstuffed, power rushing out of it like ale from the first bung in a new cask at every point available, instead of trickling or dripping out like water from a many-pierced colander of vegetables. All these food comparisons were probably a sign that it was a good thing that this sex marathon was nearly over, and that they still had a Blighted sheep at hand. The brain would have to go to Zevran (perhaps it would help a little with whatever seemed to be off about his nerves), but surely he could have some of the spinal fluid. That was almost as good, if memory served. Better than any ale, now. He wondered if darkspawn were even able to get drunk, and decided that it really was not worth the effort to try.

Zevran felt the increase in current and screamed, feeling cloth tear in his fingers as he thrust back against Alim’s hand, fucking himself on the amazing width of it. It had not actually gotten wider in turning (any hand in one’s ass is amazingly wide), but being a darkspawn, Alim had to fold his fingers in on themselves so his claws did not tear anything, even filed down as he kept them, and that made the front part of his ‘fist’ even wider than it normally would be. Had he not taken the Architect again, earlier, Zevran doubted that he would have been able to get the fourth finger in; it was nearly as thick as the ridge of the thumb-knuckle, when on a mortal it would have been the thinnest part.

And all of it sparked and tingled with current. Zevran felt as though the hand within him was vibrating, but he knew it was his muscles responding to the much stronger imitation of the life-force that ran through every corporeal being’s nerves. It was better than vibrating, because he never went numb. He could acclimatize to the level of stimulation, but his nerves picked up each pulse directly, always at the same strength as the last one, never fading or waning.

He felt Alim settle in for the home stretch, almost cupping his fingers around his prostate and quickly rocking into it, shocking him with hard electric pulses that almost jarred the breath from his lungs, and Zevran felt the binds on his metaphorical talons loosen. And then Alim dug in with both fingers and magic and held, and Zevran was loosed, screaming, as his still-soft cock jerked weakly and spurted, streaking his chest and upturned chin with black. And for a moment, all was nothing, and Zevran had a fleeting reprieve from the unending grind of consciousness that is darkspawn existence.

He came back to himself while still coming, still with lightning in his guts, only now Alim was licking him from base to tip, tongue curling around shaft and sac, and Zevran knew that this was the cause of the renewed spasms that had returned him to awareness. It seemed like his orgasm would never end, and Zevran wondered with a mixture of terror and yearning what would happen if it never did. It would kill him, surely, but it would be a way to go, splattering all his life’s blood upon himself in a endless string of pulses of pleasure-pain.

And then it did end, as all things must, and Alim tapered the electricity down to nothing and slowly slid his hand out of Zevran’s hole.

Zevran just lay there, twitching, staring blankly at the ceiling.

“Is he alright?” asked the Architect, when Zevran still had not moved after several minutes.

“…m fine,” mumbled Zevran from the floor. “Just…wow. Thirsty,” he added as an afterthought.

Alim brought the waterskin. “Can you sit up yet? I think I might have overdone the electricity, at the end.”

Zevran answered with a disapproving noise, the sort one might expect from a disappointed cat.

“Fine, I’ll help you,” said Alim, lifting Zevran’s head and shoulders up a little and bringing the waterskin to his lips.

“Are you sure he’s alright?” asked the Architect, apparently unconvinced.

“He just gets like this, after something particularly intense.”

“Spilled my brains out through my dick, ‘s they say,” added Zevran, a little restored by the water.

“And yes, also slightly dehydrated. Nothing water and blood won’t fix. Also, I think the brain would be good for him.”

“More than usual, for a relatively newly-turned darkspawn?”

“Because it is nerves?” asked Zevran, trying to keep up with the conversation.

“Yes, Zevran. I think the Blight is having trouble with your nervous system, or something to that effect. Some of your reflexes seemed exaggerated, even at first, and I thought it was just your training, but now I wonder.”

“Oh, it’s definitely my ‘training,’” muttered Zevran, thinking of orichalcum.

“So, taking in extra nervous matter might help replace damaged nervous matter the Taint does not know what to do with. Or rather, it has gotten used to having nervous matter be semi-damaged within your body, but I believe that if you take in more, especially that infected with a strain of the Taint not accustomed to your own body, it will try to allocate it to the existing nervous system instead of converting it to other matter.”

“Do you even know if that will work?” asked the Architect.

“No, I do not. I do not know what else to do. We can’t keep drugging him, at any rate; it is too dangerous, both medically and practically. It is a good thing we were in a relatively safe place, when this happened. Imagine if this had been due to a negotiation with the Korcari complex gone wrong, for example. Or imagine what the result might be of him being drugged during a real fight.”

“You have healing skills, and scrying as well.”

“Nerve damage is often subtle, and I do not have a good frame of reference for the spinal characteristics of elven wardens turned into the final form of ghoul.”

“Do as you will, then. Sheep’s brain certainly will not hurt him.”

“Does it taste like deepstalker brain?”

“Better,” replied both Alim and the Architect, at once. “It’s also big enough you can take a bite that’s all brain,” added Alim.

“But we need to eat the rest of it first, otherwise it dies,” cautioned the Architect.

“But you can eat that much, especially with the rest of us,” said Alim. “I doubt you will suffer ill effects, after…how many times even was that?”

“Fucked if I know,” said Zevran. “Heh. Fucked.”

“Yes, very,” said Alim, looking down with affection at the silly, silly elf in his arms. Zevran said the funniest, sweetest things after truly intense sex, when he was so fucked stupid that all he could do was lie there, relaxed and floppy as if he were drunk. That had not changed, since he had turned. Alim was so glad that had not changed.

“Shall I cut open the sheep?” asked the Architect.

“No, let him drink some blood first. He needs to start slow.” Alim helped Zevran get to his feet, just long enough to cross the room. “Here, Zev, you know what to do.”

Zevran did know what to do, and began drinking blood at a relaxed pace. He did not want to stop, but he made himself do so, after several mouthfuls. If sheep’s brain was as good as the others had said, he wanted to have room for all of it.

The others looked at him, to ask if he was done; Zevran nodded, and Alim, not the Architect, sliced open the sheep’s belly—he had retrieved one of Zevran’s knives, which had been put aside from the rest of the clothing. With some effort, he dislodged the spleen, and offered it to Zevran.

It was strange, to just bite into meat and chew, with no thought of bone or gristle. Deepstalker organs were barely a mouthful, maybe two for the liver, and this he had to hold with both his hands. Blood squeezed out of the meat as he chewed, ripping flesh into shreds, and Zevran let it simply trickle down his throat. His energy was restored, as moisture soaked into his mouth, and the sheep’s tainted blood started to replace the ichor he had lost.

Beside him, Alim and the Architect were sharing the liver. Alim had given the Architect the knife, and he was eating with it, for all the world as if he were at a rural bann’s banquet table. All he needed was bread to go with it. Zevran finished the spleen, then reached into the sheep’s body (pausing to lap some of the blood slowly oozing from the edges of the wound) and pulled out a kidney. He could see the animal’s lungs still slowly breathing; magic was amazing. Zevran sat back on his haunches, now covered in blood all up his left arm, and began ripping off chunks of the kidney, grimacing slightly at the more metallic taste. Still, he finished it in a few minutes, and then began to lick the fresh, red blood off his arm—not the least bit sensually, this time, using his tongue as some kind of horrifying living strigil. No sense wasting it, he reasoned, even if he was going to be getting himself bloody again as soon as he finished, probably.

But it was Alim who was rooting around in the sheep’s body now, digging out the other kidney and also the sweetbreads.

“That’s all the organs worth eating that I can get without killing the animal,” he said to the rest of them. “I suggest, when we’re done with these, that we take out the brain first, so it’s extra fresh. Sweetbread?” he added, to Zevran.

“Sounds better than kidney,” said Zevran, reaching out for the red, dripping organ.

“Well, I’ll eat it,” said Alim, biting into that organ.

Zevran finished stuffing the sheep pancreas into his mouth, licked his fingers, and made an inquisitive noise with his mouth full.

“All right, all right,” said Alim, in reply. “Architect, could you pass me the knife. Ooh, eyes! I forgot about the eyes. They’re kind of like softboiled eggs, if you close your eyes when you eat them.”

The Architect looked faintly disgusted. Whether this was about eyeballs or softboiled eggs, Zevran could not say.

Alim slit the eyelids with the knife, then dug the eyeballs out with his fingers, with a twist of his wrist and a snapping sound. He handed one to Zevran, then held up his own as if making a toast. “Cul-sec!”

Zevran dissolved into laughter.

“What on earth?” asked the Architect, puzzled. Alim was giggling now, too. Neither had eaten their eyeballs.

“It’s this thing they did in Orlais, for a while,” gasped Alim, barely able to speak.

“This one year—39? 40? Anyway, before the Breach, while we were still trying to get in with the University of Serault,” clarified Zevran. “There was a fad, at parties, to eat an appetizer that was mostly a great ball of extremely odorous cheese, chased by cognac infused with Rivaini peppers. And to do so all at once, without vomiting, choking, or otherwise embarrassing one’s self. Of course, this was quite a difficult task, for southern palates, so…”

“‘Cul-sec,’ one shot” finished Alim, and then started giggling again.

They calmed themselves, and once again raised the eyeballs, only for that to start another bout of laughter. Eventually Alim managed, “Oh, to the Void with it,” and shoved an eyeball in his mouth, swallowing it whole, with a great deal of effort. Zevran was able to calm himself a few moments later and eat his eyeball as well—but he bit into it, instead of swallowing it whole, and instantly started making awful noises of disgust (but still swallowed it).

Alim started laughing again. “Zev, you’re not supposed to chew it! What do you think I meant by ‘cul-sec’?”

Zevran had finished swallowing his mouthful of eyeball juice and was now waving all of his tongue around in the air, as if that would somehow rid him of the taste. “That was not a very clear warning,” he groused, temporarily retracting his tongue. “I thought you meant the size and shape.”

“You still get the brain,” Alim pointed out, appeasingly. He picked up the blade again, and began worrying at the seam of the sheep’s skull.

“Please let me do that,” said the Architect. “That can be done with magic. Watching you try to do that with a mortal tool is simply painful.”

Zevran started snickering and said something under his breath about “hardly a mortal tool,” and Alim joined in. The Architect paused, spell half-cast. “Did I say something funny?”

Alim and Zevran shook their heads and tried not to so much as breathe, in unison. The Architect resumed his casting, and if he seemed to mutter something like “ _stulti elvina_ ” as he turned away, both the elves decided to let the matter pass.

The sheep’s skull cracked, split by a magic wedge, and the Architect carefully pried off the top, digging into the remnants of the scalp with his claws. As the Architect tried to pick bits of skin and wool out of his claws, grimacing as he did so, Alim pried the brain out of the bottom half of the skull, using the knife he was still holding, and presented it to Zevran.

It was about the size of a small avocado, though avocados were not pinkish, nor did they usually drip blood. Cautiously, Zevran bit into it. Blighted brain tissue spread across his tongue.

The taste was similar to that of the brains of deepstalkers or nugs—brains are brains—but there was more than a teaspoon or two of it, and none of it was bone shards. Zevran savored the morsel, squishing the soft tissue all over his mouth—it was like the texture of a particularly firm cream cheese. He had not liked cream cheese very much, in life, but this was almost divine. The taste called to him, on an instinctual level, as salt and sugar do to mortals, and he could not get enough of it.

He swallowed the last morsel, and returned his attention to reality. The Architect was using force magic to crack open the spine, at Alim’s request, while Alim was chewing on what appeared to be a piece of lung.

“I call dibs on the spine,” said Alim, with his mouth full. “You probably got enough neural tissue with the brain, and also it _is_ super delicious. But we’re saving you the heart.”

It was tougher than the other organs, thick muscle, with blood that squirted out if one bit it wrong, like an underripe tomato—about the same size as a large tomato, too. It was not so much a food as a puzzle one could also eat. This was fun, even the occasional spray of blood in his eye, as he bit into one of the chambers at the wrong angle. But even so, soon it was sadly gone, and Zevran licked the last traces of blood off his hands and then his face, trying to get every last drop of the delicious stuff.

Alim had finished the spine, and was licking a few traces of flesh from the inside of a vertebra. The Architect was trying to eat some of the skeletal muscles, but was complaining that it was already starting to go off. For of course, as soon as the animal itself died, the last traces of living energy started to leave its flesh, spells or no, and the spells failed on any bit of flesh as soon as it was removed from the body. Any flesh no longer living was useless to darkspawn, as it could not be assimilated. Half-dead could be managed, but not all the way.

At this point, Zevran was pretty sure he had had enough; he was definitely hydrated, he was pretty sure he had taken in more mass than he had lost during sex, and more could possibly exacerbate his “condition.” He looked for someplace to lie down and wait while the new matter assimilated itself. Any of the corners away from the sheep carcass would work, but none really seemed comfortable. That pile of clothes had to be washed, at least. Maybe burned, for on top of its soiling, his claws had torn it pretty well. They had not brought spare clothing, for what was supposed to be a mere week’s expedition, originally. What on earth were he and Alim going to wear?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Creating a race of beings who could absorb any kind of living animal flesh via internal assimilation seemed like a good idea at the time. Apparently the way to make this non-repetitive is eyeball jokes. That is, in fact, what French people say before doing shots.
> 
> "Mortal tools": Okay, so, there's two possible linguistic explanations for this situation. One is that the Architect used an Ancient Tevene word for "tool, utensil" that was neutral in his time, but it or a derivative has become obscene in the centuries since in at least one of the languages Alim and Zevran both speak. (Sort of like that time the prime minister or president or whatever of Israel said he was going to fuck the army, when he meant arm them, bc modern Hebrew being somewhat different from biblical Hebrew or something.) The other possibility is that the Architect used a word like "ferramentum" (the most likely one, it has connotations of "cutlery"), and Zevran said something like "More like "ferra-mentula," because he's just like that. Or maybe the pun just works the way it does in English. I don't know.
> 
> A sheep is actually about the same size as a human, by the way. I had to google so much about the internal organs of sheep, and this among other things is why I am so glad I have a vpn.


	21. Homunculi, Of Sorts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Augur has her brood. Alim convinces the Architect to skip the normal "Battle Royale" scenario that follows such things and just choose the darkspawn for later Awakening now. Some really cool magic. Nobody knows how to deal with baby darkspawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's almost kidfic. But, you know, monsters. Also, the Architect probably hasn't interacted with a child since he was one. (And he was a really weird kid, probably.)

The Augur had her brood a few days later. A runner came with the news, while they argued over some point of handwriting, and all three of them rushed to her chambers. She was looking somewhat uncomfortable, and small, grey creatures, the size of human toddlers, were crawling out of her now-upturned cloaca onto the cavern floor. It was at this point that Zevran left again, claiming squeamishness at the process and reminders of his own mother’s death in childbirth, because that was preferable to admitting that staying would give him an extremely ill-timed and inappropriate boner. It was not just the cloaca, but the thought of being in that position, and it disturbed him greatly. Were he still mortal, he would have bought a bottle of brandy and emptied it, about now. He was not still mortal, so he lost himself in one of the Architect’s older research notebooks, that had been left here when he and Alim had moved to Ostagar.

Meanwhile, Alim and the Architect watched the growing crowd of darkspawn children around the Augur.

“It’s funny—I thought they’d look like those things the Mother kept churning out, back in Amaranthine.” It was the first time Alim had actually seen a spawning, himself.

“Those were…unusual. She is in fact the only broodmother to ever produce them, and she did not before I Awakened her. She continued to produce some normal offspring after that ritual, so I think it was a matter of conscious control, and possibly her own magic. Yes, I chose her because I believed her to have been a mage before her conversion.”

“Why did she, though? They were scary to look at, yes, but not more effective at fighting, except if one had only ever been trained for or fought against anthropoids. Which I suppose might have been enough of an advantage, given how fast she could produce them. Still, most career soldiers have experience with things like wolves and spiders.”

“Well, it may have been a miscalculation on her part. I never said she had a good reason to do so, only that she could. She had somewhat similar powers to mine, perhaps strengthened by the use of my blood in the Awakening potion, but mostly just a very strong will and imagination. Terror was her strong suit, not strategy, and who could blame her?”

“Not I. I merely thought that all immature darkspawn were thus, changing as they grew perhaps, and that something in the Awakening stunted that growth, or misdirected it.”

“As you see now, those were different, and normal darkspawn grow even as the creatures whom their mothers were made from, albeit faster. Those that survive, that is. They fight and eat each other. Watch, soon.”

“Why let them fight each other? I mean, yes, the strongest do survive, but they are likely to be injured in the process. And we do not want just the strong ones, but also the quick ones, and the mages. So, why not choose a few, while they are still small enough to handle easily—do they submit to adult darkspawn, at this stage? Not that it matters, I have my voice—and keep them separate, and simply feed them enough Blighted animals till they reach their full size? That way, we do not risk any being maimed, and we have our pick of the mages, which are disadvantaged in the early culling. And it saves time; I am anxious to get Zevran back to Ostagar, where I can treat him properly.”

“It is an interesting plan, I admit. But how are they to learn to fight, if we keep them from this?”

“We can teach them, after they are Awakened. If we are going for mages, instinct does not go very far, anyway. You must have noticed the difference in Spiders’ casting, over the last several years.”

“That I have. He is much faster and more controlled, and less likely to summon beasts when annoyed or frustrated. I accept your plan. You know we may only take three, one for each of us, though.”

“Yes. It would be impossible to transport them, otherwise. And Zevran should get to help choose. You go get him, while I keep the childer calm. And hurry; they’re already starting to squabble.”

For now, the fighting almost seemed like real children playing. The childer were still too small to hurt each other easily, and their teeth and claws were only beginning to grow in, so though they wrestled and bit and scratched, the only ichor spilled was from surface wounds. And it seemed they had not learned to strangle or use weapons or magic yet. Still, it was time to put a stop to it, before things turned more serious. Alim warned the Augur of what he was about to do (she did not really care, being more focused on replenishing herself with the Blighted animals her attendants had brought her), and began to sing.

He did not need much compulsion; darkspawn childer are fickle and distractable, and defer to bigger, older darkspawn as a matter of instinct. Even if Alim had had no power but volume, they would have listened for a few moments anyway. He merely called them to stay still and attend to him, and they did, dozens of little grey faces upturned towards him, turning to follow him as he walked through the room.

Alim moved among them, scrying as he sang. He could tell which ones were the mages, this close, even if they had not yet figured out how to set each other on fire, and each one he directed to move to the far side of the room. They did. Alim then walked among the darkspawn magelings, still singing, scrying deeper, trying to find one which most closely matched his own affinities: either sympathetic magic or Blight arcanism, making substance out of Void, shields and cloaks and bolts and vises. Some basic talent for healing would also be desirable. This was not an exact analysis, by any means, but sometimes if one poked at the magic within a darkspawn mage, one could sense the general shape of it, almost as a vibration against one’s own magic.

And…there. Alim stared at the infant darkspawn before him, seeing less the little grey naked body and more a Blight-shaped presence of the mageling in the Void. It had a strong presence there, even for the mages, and if he chimed his own essence against it…yes, its magic sang the right way, an answering tone. _I claim this one to obey me,_ he sang, grasping its shoulder. Now it was bound to him, albeit weakly, and even if he lost control of the general peace, the childer would not dare harm it for fear of his wrath.

At some point in all this, the Architect and Zevran had returned. Alim had been too busy singing the peace and evaluating the mages to notice their return. They approached Alim.

“Mages are on this side,” he said quickly, before returning to the song, and then, “Tell me when you pick one, so I can tell them.”

Zevran had little trouble finding a perfectly mundane darkspawn that was both quick and strong. The Architect, on the other hand, was completely lost.

“How do I tell which ones are of any use, or what they can do?” he asked, in a whisper.

“Scry their magic,” answered Alim, and picked up the song again.

“I cannot do that. I can sense that they have magic at all, somewhat, and I can tell they have about the same amount of the Taint in them as would be expected for darkspawn that size, and that it is a normal strain of it and not erratic or mutated, but I am not even sure what you do.”

Alim finished a musical phrase before replying. “Think of your own magic, in the Void, and feel theirs, and see if any match.”

“I cannot tell the difference, Alim. I was a Dreamer, yes, but when awake I was hardly a scryer. I was a politician, and an initiate of Urthemiel’s Way of Glyphs, and also fairly good at hitting things very hard and setting them on fire. And don’t you repeat that.”

Alim would have laughed, but that would have taken air away from the song, and it was already strained, with all this conversation. He had forgotten, as he occasionally still did, that most people saw things with their eyes, and only with their eyes, instead of registering vague shapes and colors and sensing the rest with magic. He had been past twenty, before anyone had realized that by most people’s standards, he was practically blind. Since he had turned, his eyes did actually work well enough for normal sight, and he had had glasses, for years before that, but he still preferred scrying, and what it could see.

“I’ll show you. Come,” is what he said, at last. Now he had to scry closely at both the Architect and the childer, while singing, which was difficult. They walked through the mages again, eight all told—plus the one Alim had chosen, which followed behind them.

None of them were force mages. Most of them, if they had been mortals, would have been best for ice/entropy blends, or what the Circle had used to call “soft spirit” or “fadewalkers,” the kind of arcanist who did pretty much the opposite of what Alim did, when he was not being a healer. He wondered what that said about the Augur’s own magic. One, though, seemed like it might eventually develop some good primal offensive spells, and was strong in the Void as well. Alim nodded to the Architect to pick that one.

He did. Alim sang the binding, as he had already done for Zevran’s, and then they left the Augur’s cavern, childer in tow. Alim dropped the song and leaned against the wall, dizzy from lack of mana now that the beat was lost.

“How are we getting them home?” Zevran asked, breaking the silence.

“We will walk. More slowly if we have to,” said the Architect.

“No, I mean, how will we keep the childer subdued. We cannot drug them. There isn’t anything here to drug a darkspawn with. I would have found it.”

“He’s right,” said Alim. “I didn’t think of that part. I suppose I could sing them, but…my mana is not infinite. That took a lot more than I thought it would. Admittedly, it will be fewer of them, but it could still be a problem.”

“We could always simply truss them up and carry them on our backs,” pointed out the Architect.

“No,” said Zevran and Alim at once. “I will not do that to children, even darkspawn ones,” added Alim.

“They’re not children! They’re darkspawn!” said the Architect.

“We’re darkspawn,” said Alim. “And there are things one tries to avoid doing to things that look like children, even if they are not. Tying up is one of them.” There had been handcuffs sized for children’s wrists, when the Templars had taken him to the tower. He could still feel them, against his wrists. Such things were kept in museums, now, and he was glad of it.

“You sang a binding. How is that different?”

“It’s barely even a magical binding. It’s just telling them to obey, very convincingly. It’s not the sort of thing they would have nightmares about, if they could sleep.”

“Well, it is not like they can sleep,” pointed out the Architect.

“That is not the point,” said Zevran. “The point is that if we upset them, they will become scared and fractious and it will be much harder to convince them to obey any of us except through more abuse. At the very least, Alim’s singing will become much less effective. So, we should give them a positive incentive to follow us.”

“By doing what? We cannot simply offer them sweets, like mortal children,” scoffed the Architect.

“Being interesting should help,” said Alim. “You’re an original darkspawn, which draws anyone to you, and you’re out of tune with the song, which is ‘follow and watch carefully’ if nothing else. Anyway, let us gather our things, before they get restless and start hitting each other.”

They really had not thought this plan through, realized Alim. Then again, they could not have exactly predicted when the Augur would spawn her brood. Even Alim had thought it would be at least another couple days. The Architect and Zevran packed, while Alim babysat. It turned out that children’s songs were sufficient preoccupation for juvenile darkspawn, if one put the tiniest amount of mana into the singing.

“We are ready,” said the Architect, holding out a backpack. “We are not going to be able to carry everything, but the Augur’s runners will take it back ahead of us. After us, I should say, but they will pass us who are slowed by these small ones.”

“We will be fine,” said Alim. “Shall we go then? Yes.”

The hardest part was leaving the complex. The Augur’s innate draw was stronger than the Architect’s, and the childer were reluctant to leave. Alim coaxed them out with song. Eventually, they got far enough away from everything that they themselves were the only darkspawn band around. Apart from preventing fights, which occurred more and more frequently, the journey went without too much trouble.

“I suggest we find a deepstalker nest, let the childer gorge themselves into immobility, and then carry them?” said Zevran, after the seventh aborted fight, remarkably calmly for a man holding a thrashing juvenile darkspawn that was currently biting his arm.

“Won’t they start growing, then?” said Alim, aiming another Dispel at his own darkspawn, which had figured out how to use its magic a few hours back and was currently trying to use shields to force its way out of his arms.

“Yes, they would,” said the Architect. “I cast a sleep spell on mine. Somehow, that still works, though one would think it impossible. In any case, it is doing something like sleeping. I suggest you do the same to yours.”

“You do the spells. I’ve used a lot of mana keeping these creatures in line, lately.”

They went a little faster after that. The childer seemed heavy for their size, but they could be carried. They kept starting to wake up, though, with alarming frequency.

“That spell should last a good three hours, if you’re doing it right, not one,” said Alim, twenty miles later. “This is, what, the sixth time you’ve renewed it?”

“They are a bit resistant to sleep spells. Their minds do not work like mortals. I do not think they are truly asleep; perhaps they just go limp.”

“Great,” said Zevran. “They may be aware enough to hate us for this, _and_ mine is drooling on me.”

Once they reached the Tower of Ishal, the question became where to put them. The three childer could not be left together, for obvious reasons, but they needed to be kept somewhere both safe and spacious. They also needed to be fed, and several days ago, really.

If they put the blighted drakes four to a pen instead of three, and partitioned the emptied pen…It was risky, for both the drakes and the childer, but it would work. Alim kept up the sleep spells, this time (he was unsure if the singing would work, with the childer starved so). The Architect and Spiders saw to the renovations (the Architect had at least the best theoretical grasp on how to build things). Zevran looked for animals they could afford to cull.

Zevran returned with three weanling pigs just as the Architect and Spiders were finishing the last fence, down the near side of the pen. Solid wooden fences, otherwise the childer would just grapple at each other through them. They would have to make more gates, for access, and make the walls higher, later, but for now the adult darkspawn could just climb over if necessary. What the Architect or Spiders thought of this arrangement, none could say. Alim and Zevran, for their parts, had lived in worse, as mortal children, and at least this was probably temporary.

“You will probably want to infect these with your blight magic, before we give them to the childer,” said Zevran, to the Architect.

“Very well,” said the Architect, in the tone of a man asked to walk over broken glass barefoot. It was no minor use of magic, to do what Zevran asked, even if feeding the childer unblighted flesh might very well stunt them.

“You probably want to put them in the pens before you blight them,” pointed out Alim. “Much easier to handle that way.”

It was done. The animals were blighted and in the pens, the sleeping childer were placed inside the pens, and then Alim cast a Dispel over the entire area, to remove the sleep spell. As an afterthought, he put some basic hexes on the blighted animals, the kind most Circle mages were taught how to do, to make them easier for the childer to deal with.

The childer blinked awake and found themselves in a strange place, with one other creature each which was definitely blighted but weak enough to be prey. Not quite the right kind of opponent—though they could sense some, through the walls—but close enough for their hunger. These new creatures were strangely-shaped, but they still knew what to do.

The other darkspawn watched, as the childer subdued and ate the blighted animals. It did not take long. The Architect’s set its partition on fire, but Spiders, Alim, and the Architect all instantly put it out with ice.

“We’ll have to do something about the flammability,” said Alim, frowning. “At least on the mages’ sides. Otherwise, they’ll learn they can just destroy the walls, and attack each other. They can still sense each other, through them.”

“Later,” said the Architect. “We will take turns watching them until then. Spiders, do you know how to cast Dispel?”

“A little,” said Spiders.

The Architect stretched his long arms out to the sides, full length, and lit both his palms with magelight. “Show me,” he said. “Try to make both go out at once.”

Spiders could not; the Architect gradually brought his hands towards each other, until Spiders could. Six feet was an alarmingly small Dispel radius, but…

“You will do, for now,” said the Architect, sounding put upon. “The rest of us have work to do that often requires all of our attention at the same time. Work with Alim on that spell, when it is my turn to watch the childer.”

They watched the childer in silence for a little longer.

“You know, they _are_ rather cute,” said Zevran, watching his disembowel its pig. Suddenly, it started making faces and hissing.

“And that’s why you don’t eat the intestines,” laughed Alim.

“Nothing like learning the hard way,” agreed Zevran, “whether it is eating or stabbing. Intestines are a messy, bad idea.” He paused for a bit. “But I was going to say, we should give them names. After all, we intend to be keeping them. ‘Cuchillo,’ maybe, for mine. It is almost an endearment, among assassins.”

“Then I will call mine ‘Incaensor,’” said the Architect. Both the elves glared at him suspiciously; in modern Tevene, that was slang for a mage slave. But the literal meaning was indeed appropriate, if Alim's scrying had been anywhere close to accurate.

Alim considered his own darkspawn mageling, contemplating. “Mandrake,” he said at last, in the Trade-tongue; the herb with a root shaped like an anthropoid being.

“Won’t that be confusing if we’re talking about herbalism?” asked Zevran.

“Not if we refer to the plant in Tevene,” said Alim.

“Plant?” asked the Architect.

“ _Mandragora_ ,” said Alim. “‘Mandrake,’ in Trade. Nothing to do with drakes, I think.”

“I see. I suppose a Hurlock could be called a homunculus, of sorts. I do hope, however, that you are not planning on training it in herbalism.”

“Perish the thought. I merely want to see it become a well-trained battle mage, and to see how much I can teach it to talk, before we Awaken it.” Alim also wanted to use it to test the nature of the blood bonds involved, but he kept that to himself, for the moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Cuchillo" means "knife" in Spanish, aka "Antivan." I can see it being equivalent to something like "homie" among the Crows.
> 
> "Incaensor" technically means a dangerous magical substance like raw lyrium, but it is Modern Tevene slang for a mage slave. All this is from the canonical short story ["Paying the Ferryman."](http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Short_Story%3A_Paying_the_Ferryman) We don't know how far back that use goes, though.
> 
> You might have heard of "screaming mandrakes" in Harry Potter. The real plant is much more mundane. It seems like the sort of thing Alim would choose, though.


	22. A Sorcerous Subterfuge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life is normal for a bit; then some Wardens show up. Variations on something the Architect has done before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I researched ergotism so you don't have to.

The childer spent most of their time eating, resting, and trying to fight each other through the walls. They also grew quite fast; everything they took in was soon added to their height and strength. They had been the size of two-year-olds, when they were born and until their first feeding. Now, a few weeks later, they looked twice that. Alim thought they might reach their full height and strength within a year.

They had just finished feeding, right now, so it was the optimal time to work on their pens. The Architect had scavenged stone from the crumbling upper stories of the tower, and now the four of them were replacing the wooden partitions with head-height stone walls. Once those were done, they would replace the front fence of the pen with the gates from the abandoned kennels upstairs. In the end, it would look almost like a Circle dormitory.

Behind Alim, Mandrake was bouncing spirit bolts off the ceiling. That was fine, as long as it—he?—did not figure out it was possible to hit Cuchillo by tossing the bolts over the wall. Perhaps they should install metal strips as deflectors on top of the walls. Alim would mention it, once they were out of earshot. And that was surprisingly good control, for a darkspawn. Perhaps boring them half to death was the secret for fostering magic talent. That would certainly explain a lot about the old Circles.

He was not quite sure what Incaensor was doing, but the regular Dispels from Spiders said enough. There was a reason that the wall between Mandrake and Cuchillo was being built second. Incaensor was still convinced that he could burn down the stone if he made his fire hot enough—at least, he seemed to say so, having picked up a few words, as most emissaries do even Unawakened. It was technically true, but he probably would not figure out how until he was done growing, anyway, by which point he would no longer want to.

They were out of mortar, now. Zevran went to make more. Alim sat down to talk to Mandrake.

“Having fun?” he asked.

“Yes. Less hungry.” Mandrake was learning words the fastest, between being an emissary and Alim talking to him a lot. He wondered if it was really even going to be necessary to Awaken him—but the Architect would insist, certainly.

“Less hungry is good,” agreed Alim. “It goes away entirely, when you’re grown. Unless you get hurt, or something.”

“That sounds nice.” Mandrake continued tossing spirit bolts at the ceiling, in time with the dragonsong.

Alim threw a bolt that split into three bolts a foot before it hit the ceiling.

“How you do that?” asked Mandrake.

“New game: figure that out.” The more energy the darkspawn put into perfecting battle magic techniques against the ceiling—that one was pretty good for hitting multiple enemies at lower mana expenditure—the less time he would have to try to kill and eat his broodmates. Alim knew exactly how spirit magic could take down that wall, and he did not want Mandrake to turn his attention to that.

Mandrake squished up his face and threw another bolt at the ceiling. It “splashed” a bit more than the others, but nothing else. Zevran returned with the mortar, and Alim got up to work on the wall again.

The wall was finished, but they would have to wait until the next feeding to install the gates. Even though the childer returned to their usual aggressiveness within half a day after feeding, it was always three or four days before they would actually be willing to eat an entire animal, and not waste it. This left time for other things.

Alim finished deep-scrying Zevran’s spine. “I still can’t tell much, but the only logical culprit is your former use of orichalcum.”

“So is there anything we can do about this, beyond periodically casting ice spells on my penis?” Not that Zevran could actually feel the cold, but somehow it still worked.

“Well, for starts, keep up with a regular diet of Blighted animal brains.” So far, the childer had not figured out how to crack skulls yet, or that they should, either by magic or tools. That meant Zevran got to eat the brains, even if they were a bit deadish by the time the childer were done eating. “And you’ve stopped with the drugs, which is a good thing—they were the opposite of helping.”

“It worked, though.”

“Symptoms, not cause. Damaging the damage, and also a whole lot that wasn’t damaged. The hair-trigger arousal will probably get worse, before it gets better. The fact that it was happening at all was a sign that the underlying problem was starting to get better. The Taint is really pretty good at repairing things, if you let it.”

“Blame the Crows,” groused Zevran. He knew the exact dosage of orichalcum the Crows had used, and the long-term effects (in mortals) were well-documented. Really, he’d been one of the lucky ones.

“Believe me, I _am_ blaming them. You still have to let this get better on its own, though, or the Taint will keep trying to repair it while you keep trying to damage the problem away, and it will never stop. Plus you’d be constantly drugged and dependent on the availability of several uncommon herbs. We saw how well that worked out. Though, that was mostly the numbwort and valerian.”

“Are there any herbs or such I _should_ be using?”

“I would suggest a low dose of magnesium salts, but we’re out. Once it’s spring, I’ll start growing some skullcap, too, but we’ve no way to get it right now. Feverfew is risky, but we can try that.”

“Yes, it is amazing having all the common regenerative plants off the table, because we are living constructs of a miasma.”

“Isn’t it.”

Between the childer’s needs and Zevran’s, it was becoming difficult to obtain basic supplies. The Augur was on the lookout for possible Grey Warden allies, but her reach was limited to the chaotic impressions of dying darkspawn, and the distance between the complexes made communication difficult. They would have considered packing up semi-permanently and moving back to the Augur’s complex, but then they would have had to move the childer, again. It had been hard enough the first time.

As for splitting up, the Architect did not dare leave Alim and Zevran in charge of his complex. It would be far too easy for them to usurp his authority—even purely by accident. The Architect was not a particularly personable darkspawn. Alim and Zevran did not dare leave the Architect as the sole keeper of the herb garden and the childer. (The idea of all going and leaving Spiders in charge, long-term, was even worse.) Neither could go or stay alone, because of Zevran’s treatment.

And then they got word, from a Hurlock runner that had pressed itself so hard that it was almost on the point of collapse. Wardens were coming. The Augur had for once managed to hear words through darkspawn, and it seemed they might be heading directly for Ostagar.

How many, they asked. Perhaps six, the Augur had seen. And why? For that, the runner had no answer.

It was Alim who came up with a good guess. “Soil testing. The Wardens do that at intervals, on sites severely affected by the Blight. The Anderfels, a lot, the Western Approach, and in this age, Ostagar and southern Ferelden. Usually, it is done every time a new Warden-Commander is appointed. It’s been, what, fifteen, twenty years since the one that came after Howe? Even if the Wardens have been able to substantially increase their lifespans, it’s still likely that the Commander would have been replaced, recently.”

“I suppose it saves having to look for them,” said Zevran.

“The Wardens will notice if we take any here, though,” cautioned the Architect. “In the Deep Roads, casualties are expected. This place has been considered fairly safe for decades, is my impression.”

“Yes, especially compared to the Frostback Basin, where Razikale lies,” said Alim. “Urthemiel’s empty tomb lies deserted.”

“So we must simply make it look natural,” said Zevran. He was the assassin, after all. “Alim, compel the ones you wish to take into fighting with the others. Indeed, compel all of them. Exposure to heavily tainted land can cause increased aggression even in Wardens; it is documented. It is in fact part of the reason Griffon Wing Keep was abandoned. It is spring, and Ostagar is wet; these are ideal conditions for spore exposure.”

“They will still notice us,” said Alim. “We have an herb garden. A large herb garden. They’ll notice the singing, too. It isn’t possible to blame everything on Blight spores and the veil being thin.”

“Then we bind the rest with blood.” The Architect clearly meant to be the last word in this discussion. “It is detectable, but we intend to take their mage, or mages, and so the ‘addled maleficar’ will be considered responsible. They will awake on the edge of New Lothering, with the idea that they are supposed to return to their fortress, and will not question their own lack of memories.”

“Or we could simply poison the remaining ones with something native and easily detectable, and any investigators will assume they ate it by accident, knowing themselves immune to the Blight but mistaking a deadly shape altered by the Taint,” countered Zevran.

“But then there would be investigators,” said the Architect.

“Why not aspects of both plans?” asked Alim. “Put ergot in their bread. It has been wet enough, this last year, that no one will question it. I already have the cultures of it. It’s surprisingly Blight-resistant. The symptoms will last long enough afterwards that no one will even look for blood magic. We will just have to make any resistors forget the garden, and that will take less, if they are already delirious. We can also take the ones we want, this way, and if we delay them longer than the others all will assume they simply ran off and were lost in their delirium.”

“Will they be any use, that way? Does that poison not make the limbs fall off?”

“Depends on the strain. The ones common to southern Ferelden produce more delirium, not gangrene. Some think it’s what’s responsible for Andraste’s visions, actually, though the Chantry suppresses that, or did. Others think they were caused by lyrium.”

“And I will have to take care of the actual poisoning, I think,” said Zevran. “If I catch them coming out of New Lothering, will that be soon enough, or too soon, do you think?”

“Can you keep shadow-stealth that long? If they sense you, we’re all done for.”

“I believe so. The other day I did cartwheels in front of the Architect for several minutes, and he didn’t even notice.”

“Poison their food first night out of New Lothering, then.”

“Done. Do we have any very large cloaks? In case they leave the town during the daytime. I can dig a hole in a hill near the road, watching for them, but I will have to leave it to follow them.”

“I will lend you one of mine,” said the Architect. He wore one for tending the herb garden, in nasty weather.

It was probably just the thinning veil, and the echoes of the Blight, not yet a century past. That was what Elgara told herself, as she tried to will away the rolling in her stomach, the tingling in her fingers, and the almost destructive fey impetus that kept trying to bubble up from the edges of her mind. But by the end of the day, everyone else seemed to be out of sorts as well. Perhaps they had picked up a fever, at the last town. That inn had been very crowded, and not particularly clean. Elgara and Hammet, the other mage, spread some healing around, but it didn’t seem to do much. Better to save their herbs for something really serious, though.

Ostagar was grand. There was simply no other word for it. Even in its decrepitude, it towered like few things still did, in this age. Elgara had expected the place to be barren, but instead it was covered in twisted trees, which yet bloomed pink and pale green under the wet spring sky. All the plants seemed strange, but they thrived. Perhaps it was due to the shortness of the Fifth Blight, or to the weather of Ferelden, or both.

And…was some deranged soul squatting here? That looked like an actual garden, near a tower on the north side. They would have to take a look, and make sure this person was not deliberately growing illegal poisons, but people were entitled to kill themselves however they pleased, Elgara supposed. That was certainly what eating anything grown here was, by the last report.

The door to the tower was blocked off with a barrier of about a human’s head-height, rough but made to be difficult to climb, at least on this side. Maybe the squatter, or their corpse, was on the inside.

“Hey, Nesha, can you boost me up to look over this?” called Elgara.

“Sure you don’t want someone taller?” asked Nesha, a dwarven warrior, wiping off her gauntlets on some plants as she straightened up from taking a soil sample.

“Someone taller might drop me over the barrier,” laughed Elgara. “Besides, the others are farther away.”

“Good thing, or they’d think you were flirting with me. Enticing me into looking up those robes?”

“I assure you, I could do that without a mysterious barrier, and you know it. You ready, yet?”

“Sure. Grab the highest spike-thingy you can, and step on my hands.”

After a lot of combined “Oofs!” and “Ughs!” and flailing, Elgara had her head over the top of the barrier, half her weight supported by Nesha, the other half by clinging desperately to a wooden spike protruding from the top of the outward-slanting barrier. It was a more gentle slope on the inside, actually more like steps than a slope; clearly a sophisticated defense. It would likely have taken multiple people to build it, and at least one with significant military experience or building skill. But there was no one within sight. Perhaps they were hiding, which was honestly reasonable—but what on earth was going on here?

“See anything?” asked Nesha, sounding slightly winded.

“Yeah, you can probably put me down now.” A few more fumblings, maneuvers, and near-impalements, and Elgara was on the ground. She described what she had seen.

“Yeah, that’s weird,” said Nesha, frowning. “I mean, maybe they died, but if not, what _are_ they doing here? All this”—she gestured at the garden around them—“looks like it started as ordinary infirmary-garden plants, like you see at any Warden outpost I’ve ever been at, not that I’m a plant expert, though of course the Taint’s fucked them up good, but why here? I heard something once about people making poisons with Blight-touched plants, but not like…elfroot.”

“‘Amber Rage,’” said Elgara. “It was a problem in some Chasind clans, during and after the last Blight. The plants have a form of the Blight mutated by their natural poisons, and people and beasts can catch and spread it. But with this kind of quantity, if this were a similar case, we would have seen or heard something of it. And these herbs have been tended, recently—there aren’t any weeds, hardly. If the farmers are dead, it would be extremely recent. I don’t like this, at all.”

“Me either,” agreed Nesha. “Oh, and you probably don’t want to touch the plants. My fingers are tingling and kind of burning, now. No rash, though.”

“Noted,” said Elgara, casting a mild healing spell. “That help?”

“Not with the fingers. Fixed the headache, though. Funny, I didn’t even notice it until it stopped.”

 

It had to be something in the air itself, or the soil, or maybe in the wood they had burned for heating dinner. They had eaten and drunk only the food and water they had brought from New Lothering, so where else could it be coming from? Nobody could properly feel their hands, this morning; everyone’s stomachs were loose; and Nesha, Hammet, and Bran were seeing things. Meanwhile, Seryn was insisting he’d been attacked by biting ants. Elgara could see no insect bites of any sort, and Seryn got alarmingly, ear-twitchingly angry when she said so. Donnell, their commanding officer, claimed to be mostly fine, but his façade seemed rather strained.

Elgara knew the “Purify Blood” spell, but she had not used it since her healer certification, several years ago; and if she were being honest, she was too addled by whatever-it-was herself to cast it without…accidentally removing all of someone’s blood along with the mystery toxin, or something. Creation she could handle in her sleep (they would be fine if somebody broke a bone), but Spirit had always been harder, and a lot of the fancier medical spells were based on that. At least the soil surveys were almost done. One more night, and they could leave this accursed place and never come back.

 

She was not sure if she was asleep or not. Everything hurt, like electric needles driven into her limbs, and the world seemed to swim. She was pretty sure she was lying on her bedroll, and she was pretty sure that one of the low voices speaking was Donnell (the mundane humans seemed less affected than the mages or elves), and she was pretty sure that the one that seemed to be yelling and crying at the same time was Seryn, but nothing seemed to have true substance. Everything she looked at seemed to be jeering at her, so Elgara shut her eyes tight and let herself drift, instead. It was a little better, there in her head, where all she could see were the bright lines of nerve pain sketching out the shape of her body like iron filings on a sheet of paper over a lodestone.

There seemed to be a sort of commotion…interwoven with unearthly singing. Thinking it another hallucination, or perhaps just Seryn throwing a fit, Elgara paid it no mind. Then something seized her, and her eyes shot open as she struggled, finding herself in the grip of a monstrous creature wreathed in smoke and colored lights. Then it all went dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You will see a fair bit of these new OCs, particularly Elgara and Nesha. I didn't plan it that way, but I got attached. It's a good way to bolster the living/undead dichotomy, too.


	23. New Allies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Trio have caught some Wardens. Now they ask them a lot of questions. Things go a bit different than expected.

Elgara felt a powerful tug of magic, and then her head cleared. She was in a dimly-lit stone room, apparently cuffed to some kind of table, and…maybe she was not as alright as she thought, because the monsters were still there. They felt like darkspawn, but darkspawn just did not look like that.

“Do not be alarmed,” said one of the monsters; it seemed to have some marks on its face. “You will not be harmed unless you harm us. If you agree to hear us out, I will uncuff your hands so you can sit up.”

Did the creature know she was a mage? Elgara reached for the Fade. With her head unclouded, she could grasp it clearly. Either the creature did not know, and did not realize how much easier it would be for her to harm it given free arm movement, or it did not care.

“I am sorry for what you have been through, the last few days. It was sadly necessary to be able to take you in, and to give us cover from your superiors. From our observations, it seems ergot poison affects both elves and mages worse—well, hallucinogens in general affect mages worse—and you drew both short straws. Or short rye stalks, if you don’t mind the pun. I removed the poison; you should be fine.”

So the creature was itself a mage, and it knew she was a mage. And it somehow knew _that_ spell. If it was so advanced at Spirit magic that it knew how to purge poison, it might know how to kill or maim her from the Fade side of the Veil before she could finish casting anything that would actually hurt it. She had never actually seen someone cast Mana Clash—most countries restricted its teaching to the Arcane Enforcers corps, and its use to threat of life and active abominations—but everyone knew of it.

This being was horrifically dangerous, no doubt, but Elgara’s interest was piqued. “I will talk. And who or what are you?”

The creature unbuckled her cuffs and helped her sit up. “I am what Grey Wardens turn into, eventually, if the Calling is left unchecked. My name is Alim Surana, once Chamberlain of the Grey at Weisshaupt.”

“Wait. _That_ Alim Surana? I have, like, all your books.”

 

Of all the things Alim expected to find in these interrogations, of all the reactions he expected, he was not prepared to find he had fans. He _had_ been the Hero of Ferelden, and he _had_ written a number of detailed medical texts, in his time, but he had lived most of the last two decades of his mortal life at Weisshaupt, among the higher echelons of the Wardens, and they had not liked him very much at all. Him being an elf had not even been the greatest part of that; it was his role in the Fifth Blight, and his attempts to cheat a time-honored tradition, even one that meant early death. He knew from Zevran that few of his colleagues had mourned him—indeed quite the opposite—and had assumed himself all but forgotten save by what was left of his research team. That he might be more appreciated elsewhere had not so much as crossed his mind. He was now vertiginously reconfiguring his assumptions, as the elf before him practically babbled nervously.

“Slow down for a minute,” he said, interrupting a verbal essay on “the differences in emic and etic depictions of demographic groups in medical texts” that was so fast and Orlesian-accented as to be almost incomprehensible. “Hear me out. Basics first. I am trying to use the research I did in my former life to prevent the darkspawn corruption of the last two Archdemons. I am trying to get living Warden allies because, as I and my associates am, it is obviously impossible to keep up with current research and obtain up-to-date equipment or alchemical supplies. Said associates, whom you see here, are Zevran Arainai, former High Constable, and a repentant original darkspawn Magister known as ‘The Architect.’ Now, may I kindly ask, who are you, what is your rank, and where and what did you study?”

“My name is Elgara du Loup. I am a Warden-Enchanter, Joined for five years and serving at Soldier’s Peak, Ferelden for that time, no real seniority yet. I was hoping to make Senior rank in a few years, at which time I might be transferred, however. I was born in Halamshiral in 9:46 Dragon; upon my manifestation, I was sent to Ecole d’Enchantement Halamshiral for my initial training, then later went to Amaranthine Upper College for training as a healer, from where I was recruited by the Wardens. Ser.”

“I’m legally dead. I think that means you are not required to salute me.”

“Yes, ser,” answered Elgara, immediately realizing what she had said and biting her lip in embarrassment. From behind him, Alim heard a small sound as Zevran stifled a laugh.

“Amaranthine’s a good school, so I’ve heard. Never actually seen the College, there, though I started the program that later became it. After the Mage Rebellion, the survivors of Kinloch Hold’s Spirit Healing program mostly moved there. Ecole Halamshiral also isn’t too bad. Before it had a magic program, I taught a couple semesters of alchemy there; I think in ’41?”

“I’ve seen Kinloch Hold. It’s a museum now. We actually stopped there for half a day, on the way down here. They’ve got an exhibit on you, did you know? Some manuscripts of yours, lots of letters and texts from people who knew you, drawings of you, including some by that Qunari you traveled with during the Blight—no light-images, though, the silver-camera was only invented a few years after you went on your Calling. One of Ser Arainai, though. I can’t believe they actually kept all the mages there. I mean, the Veil is ridiculously torn up, and the building is hardly fit to live in. The tour guide said they’re continually fighting a mold problem. I mean, we’re still regulated, these days, but locking up a ton of mages together like that where the Veil is thin makes no sense.”

“What year is it, exactly?” asked Alim.

“9:75 Dragon. Why?”

“I grew up in Kinloch Hold; I was taken there in ’21. It was considered one of the better Circles, at the time. I have had my Calling, and come out the other side of it, but I’m actually only about 65 years old, counting everything. If I weren’t a Warden, if I hadn’t turned into this, I would still likely be alive, and I would only be kind of old. It is entirely possible that some of my contemporaries are still teaching at Amaranthine—Florian Aldebrant was there, last I heard, though that was over a decade ago.”

“Aldebrant? He’s the Dean of Medicine. Giant white beard. Always working on fragmentary manuscripts of ancient Tevinter medical texts. Very little practical value, honestly, and the magical community’s focus on Tevinter is kind of problematic, but his generation sees it as a sort of attempt to shore up the legitimacy of magic, never mind what actually goes on in Tevinter.”

“Human mages of my generation, you mean. We elves have always been skeptical.” And Alim was going to be in a lot of shit for that from the Architect later, he knew, but he could not just let someone badmouth the Reorganization Generation like that. They had been the ones who had actually overthrown the Circles, after all. “In any case, it’s still living memory. Acting like it’s ancient history just makes the Chantry look better. People your parents’ age fought for the old system to continue and then they raised the people your own age, never forget that. But anyway—I know you don’t have the rank or posting to be involved with the latest Blight research, but what’s trickled down to the rank-and-file Wardens? What about miasmatic research in general?

“Pretty much everywhere uses the Surana Joining now, though that’s been since before you left on your Calling. There was a movement to revert to the traditional one after Arainai left, but it was quashed. Fewer deaths makes recruiting professional combatants easier. What has happened, after Arainai left, is der Feuer managed to get a special research outpost built in Serault. That’s where most of the Wardens’ research is, now. Serault’s college is starting to eclipse the University of Orlais, these days, even on things that aren’t optics and micro-matter studies, though it charges tuition for everybody who isn’t a town resident or a Warden, and it still doesn’t let in elves who aren’t Wardens, though I think the Crown is going to pick a fight with that, soon.”

“Did Orlais suddenly legalize dissection or something?” asked Zevran. “Two years ago, mages weren’t allowed to do it, and very few others were. I don’t see how they’d be doing research without it.”

“Sort of,” said Elgara. “The Emperor deregulated it and directed the local governments to make their own laws about it. It was a compromise between the Crown, the University of Orlais, and the Chantry. That was almost two years ago. Serault allows full dissection by anybody, now. Meanwhile”—Elgara grimaced—“the Teyrn of Highever still requires ‘a Templar or Arcane Enforcer to supervise all dissections of anthropoids, qunari, or animals over thirty pounds in weight, to prevent demonic activity.’ It’s extremely annoying.”

“Well, the Couslands were always known for traditionalists,” said Alim. “Anything else?  What about the resistance factor?”

“The participation rate for the resistance shots for senior Wardens ages fifty to sixty-five is around forty-five percent overall, though I believe it’s sixty-one percent in Ferelden, likely because you came from there, so that might be skewing the overall numbers. Blood monitoring for miasma levels is still opt-out, not mandatory, but the opt-out rates are decreasing, even among Andrastians, who were most of them anyway. Weisshaupt publishes an annual report on all this; I could get you copies. I’m the healer, so I’ve performed a lot of blood tests, but I’ve only ever had my year-two baseline done, since I’ve only been Joined a few years.”

“And the timeline for blood monitoring—anything changed in the last few years? How are the shots working for people?”

“Timeline’s still baseline test at two years post-Joining, every two years from years fifteen to twenty-one, and annually thereafter, and every three months once the numbers start to jump. The latest BRF Bulletin did recommend starting the shots at slightly lower levels, though. I’ve had a couple people get severe side effects, but mostly just stuff like injection site discomfort and mild fevers. And then occasionally someone manages to get a needle stick infected.”

“It’s actually working.” Alim shook his head, incredulously. “I’m amazed the compliance rate is so high, honestly. Fear of blood magic is still so prevalent. Ironically, the way we got the Wardens to go along with it in the first place was because it was similar to Circle phylacteries.”

“Also, some people still think the injections are addictive, like lyrium. Including the blood draws. It doesn’t matter how much you tell them otherwise.”

“Yes, there’s that issue too. It came up in the preliminary trials. Though, the side effects then were also much worse. Part of the issue was the centrifuge technology available, from what Zevran says. What about issues arising from extending the time between generation turnovers in command?”

“Can’t really say, yet. I have heard it remarked they’re recruiting more among younger people—twenties, not thirties. With individualized injections, we don’t really know what the upper limit is for how long it’s possible to hold off the Calling. I have heard some of the Senior Wardens say that Deep Roads casualties seem to be down the last decade or so, which I guess could reflect experienced officers remaining in field positions longer, but that could be skewed perception or anecdotal or related to something else entirely. I mean, we also have special lamps that detect dangerous gasses in tunnels, now.”

“One of Paragon Dagna’s inventions?”

“Some dwarf, anyway. Not really my field, but it made a big stir, several years ago.”

“The real question, though, is this.” And Alim prayed that he would not fuck this up. He liked this mage, and he really did not want to have to bind or kill her. “You know how the Wardens are. I know how the Wardens are. They can be awful traditionalists at times. We are designed to end the Blights by any means possible, but there has been a rather strong bent against trying to prevent them altogether, in recent decades. Most of this has to do with a fiasco involving Corypheus and an army of demons. But where Corypheus used the principles of our order as a handle to grasp us and twist our purpose to his own ends, I truly do want to avoid future Blights. I already stopped one, and it is only by chance that I even managed to do so. At least two more sleeping dragons remain, unblighted. Imagine what destruction we could prevent, if we could use the resistance factor to keep them from corruption! But Weisshaupt is set against such endeavors, and normal darkspawn can sense that Wardens are still partly mortal and fight them, until they become like me. I can reach the dragons. But, you can help me make it worth doing so, if you assist us with supplies and information. Will you help us?”

Alim could almost see the thoughts tumbling over each other, as the Warden mage considered. Obedience to the order, or to its purpose? To the shadow of a distant idol (who had drugged and kidnapped her), or to her own superiors? And how much did she know about the Architect’s past and powers, or Corypheus’? Had she noticed the hint of magic command he had put into his own voice? Might she have guessed he was not the true leader, here, and only playing a role designed to make her more likely to cooperate?

But at last Elgara seemed to come to a decision, sitting up straighter and exhaling harshly. “I will help you,” she said at last. “And I will try to talk my companions around to your side. I do not know how much help I can actually be, but I can certainly be some sort of courier. I do hope I do not have to pay for your supplies, myself. Some of them can get rather expensive.”

“We have access to supplies of ancient dwarven coins and jewelry. We can even melt them down into standard-sized ingots, though honestly it might be more profitable to sell original pieces a few at a time and say you found them in the Deep Roads. Less destructive, too; the crafting is beautiful, and probably beyond the ability of smiths today.”

“That will do, then.”

“What about where to bring the things?” And so it went.

In the end, Elgara managed to convince all of the other five to cooperate. Donnell was unsurprisingly the most resistant. However, he bought the fiction that Alim was controlling the Architect, and then a little voice-control did not hurt. Hammet and Bran, the other humans, capitulated once they saw that both their squad leader and their healer had turned. Seryn, being a rather jumpy and skeptical elf, insisted on grilling Alim and Zevran, suspecting that the Architect was enslaving and mistreating them—which was not exactly the case, but the Architect did usually get the last say in anything. Once they and Elgara convinced him that the elven darkspawn were not secretly being used for various depraved blood magic demon summoning rituals, he decided to follow the crowd, if only out of fear of what the darkspawn would do if he did not.

“We would have to bind you with blood and the Blight never to speak of it,” said the Architect, trying to impress upon all of them the importance of not telling.

“Our research assistant means that if we thought we didn’t trust you, we would drug you with something completely painless that would render you unable to remember the last thirty-six hours or so,” Zevran corrected hastily, glaring at the Architect, who, to his credit, looked admirably cowed. “Don’t worry, he likes making jokes. There’s enough cultural difference after…going on fourteen hundred years that some of them aren’t funny anymore.”

Nesha insisted on actually examining some dwarven artifacts before she was satisfied. Her family was Carta, she said, so she’d know. Alim dug out some coins he kept around, mostly to use as scale weights, and then some spoons and dishes he used for potions.

“You can’t have those, though,” he said about the latter. “I can get more like them, but I actually do use those.”

Nesha whistled. “These are worth…I’ve heard the King of Orzammar has one spoon like this, and it’s kept in a glass case in the palace, with alarm runes that make noise and zap you to death if you touch it. If I get you some normal lab glass, or even normal gold stuff if you need it for some special chemmy thing, can I fence this?”

“If it’s as valuable as you say, it might be hard to fence,” pointed out Zevran.

“Fine, then, old coins. There’s collectors for those.”

“You can have the old coins,” said Alim. “Most of them. I do need scale weights. Put that on the list of stuff we want.”

 

“We are going to bind them, right?” asked the Architect, when he had got the other darkspawn alone.

“No, we’re not,” said Alim. “We had a stroke of luck. Their healer mage is happy to work with us. They won’t tell. We’re going to dose them with a much lower dose of ergot, not enough to make them sick again, just show up in their systems if anyone checks, and Elgara is going to say they accidentally bought contaminated bread in New Lothering, to explain the travel delay. The other healers at Soldier’s Peak—because there’s got to be more than one, with the size of that garrison, last I remember—the other healers will check that story and confirm it. Then, if anyone turns and tries to tell, they’ll be told they must have hallucinated it all, between the ergot and the thin Veil.”

“And what if you’re wrong?”

“If we’re wrong, we leave. We didn’t tell them where the Augur’s complex is. We’ll lose some work, but nothing we can’t replace, of what we have now. If they do find where the complex is, then the Augur will be able to take care of herself, and if she can’t, she’ll body-hop into one of them, and probably be happy not to be a broodmother, anymore. It will work out.”

“Always the strategist,” muttered the Architect, seeming to feel slighted.

“What is the worst that happens? So we die,” said Zevran, to the Architect. “The world will go on without us. I accepted this before I turned twelve, and you might as well do so yourself. Even if it comes to a Blight, or two Blights, the Wardens know how to deal with that, and they are even breeding griffons again. I even heard rumors that the Qunari were trying to make flying machines, several years ago. We have much to gain from willing allies, and in the grand scheme of things, relatively little to lose in the event of treachery.”

The Architect looked at the two former elves in turn, first Alim, then Zevran, then Alim again, then Zevran. Finding both of them staring stonily at him, and himself outnumbered—he could have forced them to obey, and they all knew it, but also what would be the reprisal for that—the Architect swept off in a huff, robes billowing behind him, muttering something about “always valuing your contributions.”

“Four days before he stops snapping at us, I think,” said Alim, as soon as the Architect was out of earshot.

“Three, I say,” countered Zevran. “Wager you that silver Paragon coin with the water-screw on it?” They had found a box set of the things in a thaig, once, struck in two dozen different designs of dwarves holding inventions. They traded the coins back and forth between them on minor odds, like this.

“Done,” said Alim, grinning with all his pointed teeth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Alim. He just never really considered that elven mages might look up to him as a role model. Of course they would!
> 
> BRF = "Blight resistance factor." Of course Weisshaupt is keeping records on everything. Alim probably is the one who made sure it did.
> 
> The College of Amaranthine: Sometime shortly after Awakening, Alim Surana worked out a deal with the Kinloch Hold and Jainen Circles to train a small number of older apprentices to work with the Wardens at Vigil's Keep, even going so far as to perform Harrowings there, under the guidance of Templars from Amaranthine's chantry. At first, all such mages were required to attempt the Joining if they passed their Harrowings successfully; later, as the program grew in popularity and began to attract more attention for healing and herbalism than combat, this was dropped and students were only very strongly encouraged to join the Wardens. Those who did not become Wardens often joined town guards or the Ferelden Army, or went back to their Circles to be fast-tracked as Enchanters. During the Mage Rebellion, at which time Surana was on research leave, Acting Warden-Commander Nathaniel Howe opened the program to all apprentices and enchanters who wished to have a safe place to learn or teach (probably having been advised by Surana to do so). Between the relatively thin Veil at Vigil's Keep and the burgeoning number of extremely young mages who sought refuge, the Wardens relocated the program to Amaranthine, where it became a semi-independent College after the Mage-Templar War.


	24. Experiments of Various Kinds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's amazing how much easier science is when you have proper lab equipment. Alim learns that darkspawn are people. Well, learns a bit more in depth, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some interpersonal violence in this chapter.

“Oooh, look there! I think a new shipment of Orlesian ribbons came in since last month. I don’t suppose those darkspawn would mind if we spent like thirty copper on ribbons, if we’re going to all this trouble for them?” Nesha was practically skipping, the pleats in her skirt bouncing.

“Moneychanger first,” said Elgara, smiling.

“Technically, he’s a fence.”

“Whatever. Just so long as we don’t actually try to pay for anything with coins minted before the first Blight.”

“Some of them are as late as the Second Blight, actually, but same.”

The Carta fence did not seem to think much of either of the women until Nesha mentioned her family name. Then he looked slightly afraid for his life. Elgara had to suppress a smile. Nesha was all frills, when out of armor; she wore civilian dresses whenever allowed, and occasionally when not really. Elgara herself owned perhaps two outfits of real civilian clothes. Today, as on most leave days, she wore the non-combat casual uniform that the Wardens called “townies” or “barracks kit”: a loose linen shirt, tucked into linsey-woolsey pants, and a cloth strap belt, with canvas-and-Rivain-gum soft shoes; all in grey and deep blue. The barracks kit allowed a wool sweater and a canvas jacket as well, but it was a warm day.

“They’re worth more than that,” Nesha was saying. “All Second Blight or earlier, those are.”

“And you found these in the Deep Roads?”

“Yes. Happens pretty often. Sergeant took most of it, for the Wardens, but he let us keep a few, each.”

“I’ve only got enough with me for a couple of these. An IOU for the rest?”

“No,” said Nesha. “We’ll keep the rest till you have the change for them.”

“I’ve got fifteen sovereigns, ninety-three Orlesian royals, mostly in gold tens, the rest a couple fives and ones, and…how much silver are you willing to carry?”

“About fifty ‘alleys’ been the two of us,” said Nesha. ‘Alley’ was the nickname for a Fereldan silver coin, after the ones minted with the image of King Alistair.

“That should cover that gold one, there, that should impress my patron into funding more of these sales, also that small silver one and two of the perforated copper alloys. I’ll give you the gold and thirty alleys, for those.”

“Seventy.”

“Forty.”

“Sixty.”

“Forty-five.”

“Fifty-five.”  
“Fine, fifty-five.” The fence counted out the money.

Nesha dug a leather pouch out of her bag, and put all but twenty silver pieces in it; then she counted out ten and put them in her own wallet. She handed the rest to Elgara. “You’re the one who knows what we’re looking for, with what we’re buying.”

“Anything that could be gotten through our channels?” interrupted the fence.

“Easier to get legit, honestly. It’s not contraband, just expensive.”

“Where am I supposed to put this?” asked Elgara. “I’ve got the pockets, but there’s a reason thieves are called pickpockets.”

“Just shove it in your breastband. No one’s going to steal it from there. Works every time.”

“Then one is going to look twice the size of the other!”

“Between them, duh.”

“That is not going to work for me. I’ll just look like I have three tits.”

“Just a sec, then” said Nesha, rummaging through her bag again. She pulled out a large handkerchief. “Here.”

“Is that even clean?”

“Yes.”

Blushing, Elgara shoved the purse and the handkerchief into her shirt. “Stop looking, you,” she snapped at the fence.

“I’m not into elves,” he said.

Elgara flipped him the bird with the hand that was not down her shirt.

 

“I still think this is a terrible idea. I look ridiculous. It’s heavier on one side than the other. Also, you realize that when we get to the apothecary I’ll then have to pull all this out of my shirt?”

“You duck into an alley and get it out of your shirt beforehand, silly.”

“Then why didn’t you—?”

“I didn’t think of that at the time.”

“For the record, I hate you.”

“You say that, and yet…”

They’d reached the door of the apothecary. Without ceremony, Elgara pulled the coin pouch and the handkerchief out of her breastband, and handed the latter to Nesha. Taking a deep breath and smiling deliberately, she opened the door.

Surana had given her a list of common lab chemicals. Some were easily procured at any dry goods shop, such as sugar, powdered gelatin, agar (sold as “soup thickener”), baker’s soda, and alum. The amounts needed could be bought for less than fifty coppers, in total, so she had done that as soon as they had returned. Most of the more esoteric and expensive ones were in supply at any large town’s apothecary shop. Elgara also had some hunches about newer compounds that might be useful. Some had only been isolated in the last few years. Some of the equipment requested was also in the shop, scales and crucibles and burners and such, but for others, and for a few compounds as well, the shopkeeper would have to order them from Orlais.

There was a catalogue, for that. Pulp paper, and cheap ink; Elgara tried and failed not to smear it on her hands. The model of centrifuge Alim had requested was actually quite out of date, by now. Engineers kept tinkering with the arrangements of runes and lodestones, every year producing centrifuges that spun faster and held more. Micromatterists kept devising new materials for ever more precise filters for the higher speeds to force particles through. What had been state-of-the-art in 9:60 was “recommended for beginning micromatter laboratory exercises” in 9:75. Surana probably did not need the one with the twelve-foot diameter—how would they even get that to Ostagar, in the first place? Never mind that it cost twenty times what Nesha’s contact had been able to give them, yet, even without what they had already spent on supplies—but the “Infinesitor 75 Mini” seemed a lot more like what they could handle. It was an updated version of what the College of Amaranthine currently used to process the blood cultures the Wardens sent them; they had a 68 or 69, she recalled. It had been installed during her last year there, whatever the model was.  Elgara examined the specs again. Eighteen inch diameter, up to ten thousand revolutions per minute, dial speed setting, variable temperature control, silencing runes; a spring timer, even! Surana was going to cream his robes when he saw the thing.

It cost eighteen hundred royals. Then there was shipping. With the current exchange rate…yes, they had just enough. Barely enough, but enough. Elgara made sure to get the receipt in triplicate.

“Five silver left. I think that’s enough for a nice lunch and maybe two ribbons,” said Nesha.

“That Rivaini place on Dane’s Road?”

“I was thinking Morel’s Morsels, but I owe you, for earlier.”

 

“What the fuck is this?” asked Alim, several weeks later. “The crate said it was a centrifuge. This is nothing like what I recall a centrifuge being. Did they just forget to ship the rotator cradle? You sure you didn’t miss a crate, Zev?”

Zevran peered at the instructions. “I believe the rotator array is inside what looks like the engine box. You open the lid, on the top. It’s got an arrow showing which way is up. The panel on the side is where you put the electricity runes. Those are probably wrapped and inside the array.”

“How do I get it op—oh, spring button. Neat. Sample tubes—they had better send more of those, in the next shipment—dials that probably screw on somewhere, runes. Huh. New type of connectors.”

“Lyrium-gold alloy, it says here. That’ll conduct electricity, all right.”

“This thing is powered by electricity runes?” asked the Architect, who was watching the proceedings with a confused expression. “Won’t those just zap the samples?”

“No,” said Alim. “Some of the runes charge lodestones to make them stronger. Lodestone repulsion powers a motor to make the thing spin. Then it’s cooled by other runes, which can switch in and out of activation patterns, but those are less likely to break due to use. The electricity runes work a lot harder, and so the lyrium depletes before the machine becomes obsolete, and sometimes the rune itself breaks.” Alim unwrapped the machine’s dials, squinting at them in confusion. “Zev, hand me the instructions?”

Zevran did so. For a moment, there was silence as Alim read them. Then, “It’s got a timer? With a delay start setting? Maker’s balls, why the fuck was this not a standard feature fifteen years ago? Or thirty, for that matter? All the times I set alarm clocks for the middle of the night to go turn those machines on or off, and woke up the entire wing of wherever we were staying along with me. All those times. And it’s just two extra springs to solve it. Fuck me with a titration flask.”

“I doubt the titration flask would enjoy it,” gasped Zevran, laughing. “I saw that part fifteen minutes ago and just kept wondering how you would react. ‘Titration flask,’ though. I will never get that picture out of my head. And it is a fairly attractive picture.”

“Please don’t actually fuck me with a titration flask. That sounds painful, and we don’t have enough of them to spare one. It was just the nearest alchemical oblong I could think of.” Alim paused. “I think it’s done. Do we have anything ready to use in it, right now?”

“We could try that Blight-adapted macromiasma culture, the one that grows in decaying fruit.”

“Perfect! Where’s the filters? I think they came in the other box, the one with the imported supplies.” Everything that had actually been available in Ferelden had arrived a few weeks earlier. The Wardens’ merchant contacts left it in a ruined building in Old Lothering, and Zevran and Felix retrieved it from there. Apparently, the merchants thought that the Wardens were doing secret research in Ostagar, which was actually not far wrong.

“Which ones?” asked the Architect, who was leaning on the aforementioned box.

“The ones that have ‘Size 12’ printed on them.”

The Architect found them and handed the package to Alim. Alim had in the meantime put on a pair of clean lab gloves—they had a proper autoclave, now, and it was glorious—and he opened the package and prepared a sample.

“It says here…thirty minutes to force ninety-five percent of this size particles through the filter. Wow. Okay. Main power switch on, speed dial set, timer set, and…go!”

A curiously muted whirring filled the lab room. They all stared at the machine for nearly two minutes, watching it blur from shaking. Thirty minutes began to seem like a surprisingly long time to immortal creatures.

“So…that’s the centrifuge. What do we do now?” said Alim, finally.

“Organize the stuff from the other box?” asked Zevran.

“That is probably a good idea.”

 

The micropter arrived the next week. Serault’s opticists still had not figured out how to create lenses strong enough to see micromiasmata—a category including such diverse pathogens as measles, the common cold, and the Blight—but macromiasmata and bio-atoms were now able to be seen in much more detail. Alim and Zevran spent two full weeks just looking at micromatter, Blight-infected and not. Du Loup had sent an entire box full of scientific papers as well, and yes, what had been thought of as homogenous smudgy matter within bio-atoms was actually even tinier component parts, as organs were to the body, called “organelles.” Seeing as bio-atoms were not in fact the smallest building units of the universe, and were now fundamentally proved to be different from “necro-atom” structures by more than behavior, the alchemists and theorists were now debating whether to rename them to be more accurate. Several terms were proposed in a special expanded “letters to the editor section” of Bio-Optics Quarterly; Alim rather fancied “viviculum.”

Now that they actually had the means to do it, their work proceeded apace. Which meant they needed more dragons.

Currently, the childer were in one of the dragon pens. They were not full grown yet, but getting close. They had an ample supply of Warden blood, from their new allies, but Alim wanted to try an experiment. He would do it on Mandrake only, and if it did not work, they would just Awaken the rest normally.

First, Alim tried giving Mandrake just the resistance factor, in his food, to see if that did anything. It did—Mandrake vomited up about half his stomach reserves, as the resistance factor killed the Tainted matter there, and bled from his mouth and throat until Alim healed him. He was consoled with another animal that had been “specially checked to make sure it wasn’t bad.”

So it _was_ blood magic, then. Once Alim was sure that Mandrake had recovered fully, he fed him an animal that had been inoculated with miasma only. The darkspawn seemed a bit lethargic for a day or so, but otherwise no change. Alim then decided to try an animal that had also been given Blighted drake’s blood and the other Joining components.

At first nothing seemed to happen. Mandrake finished his meal, curled up in a ball to digest it, and ignored Alim’s questions. Alim went to go work on something else.

A few hours later, the screaming started.

All of them found Mandrake throwing himself against the stone wall and wailing about “it” being “gone.” It took the Architect a few moments to make out the words, but he was the first to realize the gist of what had happened. Then he force-pushed Alim into the wall.

“You Awakened him without so much as asking me first?”

“He’s my responsibility,” gasped Alim, through the pain. “You said so.”

“Teaching, not Awakening. You have almost certainly stunted his growth! His body will have developed a resistance against itself.”

“That’s not how it works.” By now, Alim was fairly certain that at least four of his ribs were cracked.

“Yes it is! The Awakening relies on the Wardens’ resistance to break the darkspawn from the song.”

“No, it’s not. I tested that. I gave him just the resistance factor last week. He got sick, but his appetite soon reappeared, and he grew since then. I have been measuring the growth of all of them. _You_ never bothered. The Awakening uses the remnants of the blood binding put on all Wardens, not their resistance.”

“You’ve theorized that. I still believe the resistance factor is involved.”

“It’s incidental, for full darkspawn. Later. I did not give Mandrake Warden blood, though.” Alim explained the relevant details. “Please put me down,” he croaked.

The Architect dropped the spell. Alim fell limply to the floor. He gasped for breath, painful breaths, scrying himself. Yes, five ribs cracked—the Architect hit a little harder to one side with force magic, interesting fact that—and everything else in his upper torso bruised. He healed himself quietly, without glow or noise, lest he anger the Architect further. Behind him, Mandrake still screamed.

Alim lay there with his eyes closed for another half minute, putting off having to face the situation. Then he climbed to his feet and looked around. The Architect stood before him, calmed but glaring at him. Spiders had returned to Dispel duty, and seemed to be trying to avoid notice. Felix and a few other Awakened darkspawn were holding back Zevran from trying to maul the Architect.

Alim sat down heavily on a spare bale of straw and began truly explaining what he’d done.

“We haven’t ever been able to get an Awakened darkspawn to hear the song again, you know? I mean, if we could, we might have fixed that whole thing with the Mother. So I wondered if Archdemon blood was too strong, even traces of it. Because it’s the ultimate kind of dragon. Blighted drake’s blood, though, it’s still the same kind of magical, but maybe it could be reversed by using real Archdemon blood for a Joining. Joining, binding, two words for the same thing. Wardens can sense the darkspawn and hear roused Archdemons in their sleep before their Callings because of that binding. It just so happens that the Joining infects us with the Taint, which eventually turns us into real darkspawn. And then we start hearing more than what the binding allows, but what all normal darkspawn experience. But if you Awaken and then rejoin someone who’s already a darkspawn, I don’t think you’d have to worry about that, about them going feral. They would be like me.”

“We do not have any Archdemon blood,” observed the Architect.

“Actually,” said Alim, fumbling around in his robes, “we do. Some of the Joining potion is put in phylactery amulets and given to the survivors, as a token. It can be used for the Joining, in emergencies. I still have mine. And it’s a wonder you didn’t break it, a few minutes ago.”

“Will it work?”

“Possibly. It may be too old. Or I may be wrong about the possibility of a second Joining. If it doesn’t work, our Warden allies may be able to procure a fresher sample to try again.”

“I advise you to try now, then. That creature is going to kill itself if it keeps on doing that, and if it keeps making that noise for much longer I will end it myself.” It did not seem like an idle threat.

Shielding himself slightly, Alim opened the door to Mandrake’s pen and slipped inside. “Hey,” he said to the howling darkspawn, and then louder, “Hey,” until he finally took notice. Mandrake stopped screaming and attacking the wall, only to flatten himself into a corner and hiss. Still with shields up, Alim approached.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” he said. “Use words. You know words.”

“Song stopped! Can’t feel anyone! You’re all dead! I’m dead!”

Alim realized that he had chosen his apprentice too well. Of course a Void arcanist would react poorly to being cut off from the Void. He had reacted similarly, the first time he had been given magebane. Well, except for the part where he had been too drugged to go ballistic. But he had been unable to see, and had thought he must be dead or dying for those weeks until he had sobered up in the Circle infirmary. Mandrake could see just fine, but all darkspawn sensed each other the way Alim scryed the Fade-shapes of people, and of course emissaries did so more than the rest. That layer of sense had faded away from him, and he had not even known why.

“I Awakened you,” said Alim. “You knew we were going to do it eventually. That’s why the song stopped. It’s still there. You just can’t hear it.”

Mandrake made a series of terrible croaking noises that would have been sobs if darkspawn were able to cry. “I want it back. I can’t feel my magic.”

“Can you still use your magic?”

Mandrake appeared not to have considered whether he could, simply assuming he could not use it if he could not feel it. Now he brought his hands together and concentrated, producing a wobbly sphere of violet light. And then it sputtered out. Mandrake began dry-crying again.

“I still can’t feel it! I want it back!”

“If I sing, will that calm you down?”

Mandrake did not answer. Alim began to sing anyway, following one line of the notes of the dragonsong. As he sang, he healed the scrapes and bruises covering the darkspawn’s body. Slowly, the childer quieted.

“I do not know if I can bring it back all the way,” said Alim, eventually, when the burden of the song switched into an octave he could not imitate. “I’m sorry for taking it away. I should have asked, first. I should have realized it would be hard for you. There is something we can try, though I don’t know if it will work. If it does work, it may not work right away. It’s a potion to make people hear the song, but it was made a very long time ago and might not be good anymore. We may be able to get the stuff for another potion later, but it will take longer.”

“Try it!”

Alim pulled out the vial necklace, sparing a last glance at it. It was a thick glass cylinder, with just a tiny channel for the Joining blood, banded about by metal which covered the stopper and twisted up into an eyelet for the necklace cord to pass through. A bit of magic did away with the metal bands, and the top came off, revealing a wax seal underneath. Alim scraped away the wax and worked free the glass stopper underneath.

“It might make you dizzy,” he warned Mandrake. It would probably also blister his throat. The stuff was formulated for mortals and had Wilds’ Flower in it.

“Don’t care.”

“Open your mouth, and swallow when I say to.”

It took just seconds for the lyrium to hit. Very little lyrium in perhaps a dram of Joining, but Mandrake was small and had never had any before. At least it probably masked the burning. Alim caught Mandrake before he fell, and sat there awkwardly holding a darkspawn that giggled uncontrollably. Stress as much as the lyrium, that.

“Better yet?”

“Feel strange. Not sure about song.” And did that mean it was working, or was he just confused by the lyrium? Well, Alim could sit there until they knew. It could be days before Mandrake assimilated any viable motes of Archdemon blood that might have been present in the Joining. Atoms, vivicula, whatever one called them. It took weeks or months, often, before new Wardens were able to sense darkspawn. Alim was not sure why. Perhaps it simply took a certain accumulation of the Taint in the body before the blood bond had enough to work with. But if that were the case, then Mandrake was far past that. Perhaps the actual bits of Archdemon had to get to the right place in the body before they could make it work, moving like a cancer, becoming hybrids in the process. Perhaps Wardens could slay Archdemons not simply because they were bound to them, but also because they were a little bit archdemons themselves. Like to like.

If it was a matter of moving vivicula, the destination was almost certainly the spine or the brain. Alim had dissected and reacted the bodies of Wardens who had died in combat, and those parts and the fluids and membranes around them always had higher concentrations of the Taint than muscle or even blood. It was not an illusion caused by the properties of those organs; Alim had done the same reaction in normal tissue without getting any false positives, even with a mix of normal tissue and Warden blood. Perhaps someday the Joining would be mostly centrifuged Archdemon blood, with the dragon vivicula concentrated and most of the Taint and toxins filtered out, and injected near the spine. There were large muscles in the buttocks and shoulder that would do. He would mention the idea to Du Loup in his next supply request, and let her take the credit.

How long? Alim had not counted the measures. It seemed unfair to do so, when Mandrake could not. And they were underground. A very long time to sit in one place, even for an immortal. For whatever time it was, Zevran and the Architect had not needed him, or had managed to work around his absence. Both he and Mandrake were in a sort of light trance state, as can happen when a darkspawn stays very still, especially if it has recently been injured, as both of them had been. Sometimes Alim sang, when the melody passed into his vocal register.

Mandrake stirred first, during one of the quiet intervals. “I hear it, a little,” he said.

“Hmmm?” said Alim, mind returning to normal space and time.

“The song is back!”

“It worked!”

“Some. It’s very quiet. I have to listen.”

It might get a little stronger in time, Alim thought, but he would not give false hope. Zevran, though, had described his own perception of the song much the same way. Alim heard it more, but he was pretty sure it was his own Blight magic that made him do so. The pull of it oriented him, like a lodestone or gravity, but while he sensed the loud points in the song, he was not inexorably pulled into them, as Unawakened darkspawn were. As Mandrake so obviously had been, on that difficult first trip to Ostagar. Time would tell whether or not he was now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good lord, a fuckton of meta. This is pretty much scifi, because it's "how would science develop in a world with magic?" My answer seems to be, "they'd develop basic lab equipment a lot faster, because they could use runes to power it. Also, magic isn't infinite, so they'd develop ways to simulate it or make up for where it falls short, especially if the world in question already has a strong herblore tradition."
> 
> Emissaries are definitely capable of talking and having emotions before being Awakened, it's just they're probably way too dialed into the Song to do it much. After all, if you can use telepathy, why not? They're able to have a little more control over their engagement in the group mind, I think, which makes them a bit more independent within it, as well as being able to perceive it better.
> 
> Mandrake reacts about as well as the Mother did, honestly. I doubt the Mother was the first one to react badly, either. As for Cuchillo, who isn't an emissary--well, he's born to an emissary broodmother, and he is exposed to people talking a lot. He knows and uses a few words before he is Awakened (and then re-Joined), which happens eventually and isn't really a spoiler. After, he's a bit more verbal, but mostly with the Trio, who prefer talking.
> 
> And yes, Alim should have asked first! And told Mandrake what he was doing. He's been around the Architect a little too long, maybe.


	25. A Variety of Tense Shenanigans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Warden allies have to take their first major risk for the Architect et al. Meanwhile, training the childer is...eventful. And Alim has been smart enough to hide some of his and Zevran's past from the Architect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember the spell combinations from Origins? There's a joke that kind of relies on those. Also, remember, I started fucking with the game canon at about the end of Dragon Age 2, and so Alim and Zevran were working with the Inquisition, thanks to Leliana. Just for context.

Alim made his way up to the lab, where he found Zevran and the Architect.

“How long was I down there?” He had asked Spiders the same question, down in the pens, but he had not known.

“Three and a half days,” said Zevran. “You worried us. You just sat there singing, and neither of you would respond to us.”

“Did it work?” asked the Architect.

“Yes. It did. I was right about the magical hierarchy of dragons. He says he can hear it again, but it’s ‘very quiet.’ That’s a direct quote, by the way. I don’t know if it will get stronger.”

“So I suppose we can Awaken the others now?” asked Zevran.

“We need Archdemon blood to re-Join them,” reminded Alim. “I am _not_ going through that again. Especially not the ‘being slammed into a wall so hard that my ribs break and then having to calm down a severely distressed darkspawn before I’m properly healed’ part,” he added, glaring at the Architect. “Where’s some paper and ink? I need to write Du Loup.”

 

“Archdemon blood. He wants Archdemon blood. How am I supposed to get him Archdemon blood? It’ll be noticed.” Elgara ran her hands agitatedly through her short-cropped hair, as she sat on the edge of Nesha’s bed.

“How much does he need, for two darkspawn?” asked Nesha.

“For two darkspawn? About half a dram. Less, but you need at least that much to cast the phylactery spell.”

“Then what’s—”

“—the problem? The problem is he wants an entire ounce, because he plans to do this to more darkspawn someday. We only have six ounces for this entire outpost! It will be noticed!”

“Couldn’t you cheat it, El? Like when you swipe your parents’ nice liquor and fill it up again with corner-store swill. It’s Blighted dragon blood. We’ve got concentrated Blight for Joinings. You can buy live dragon blood from the ‘chems shop.”

“For its weight or more in gold, yes. And my parents could never afford more than corner-store swill in the first place. I suspect that’s why neither of them drank much except on feastdays. Thing is, an Archdemon’s more than a high dragon. Or a drake, which is what most alchemy-grade dragon’s blood is. Magically, I mean. It will make the whole thing wrong for magic. I don’t want to risk the entire next few centuries of Joinings going wrong because I diluted the Archdemon blood.”

“You think it would kill people? More than it already does, anyway.”

“Kill people? No. It would be less likely to, probably. Directly, I mean. It might fuck up the ability to sense darkspawn, and that could kill a lot of people.”

“Just send him half a dram, then. Or maybe a whole dram. That might be explainable through evaporation plus lazy reading of markings. He can get more later.”

“Surana also wants me to look into the physiological properties of dragon blood, and what happens to people who ingest it. Reavers. Specifically Warden reavers. He thinks it might be related to how the Joining works, and our ability to kill Archdemons.”

“Sounds interesting. He’s just letting you take credit?”

“Well, he pointed me to a passage of something he wrote years ago and said to say it was a jumping-off point. I will be doing all the work, anyway. He won’t. He just came up with the idea for the line of research. It’s not like he can publish, since he’s legally dead. Besides, apparently dragons catch the Blight if darkspawn so much as look at them the wrong way, so there’s no way he can study this himself.”

“So you’ve got something to study. You’ve always said you wanted to go research, not field. What’s the problem? You keep sounding like somebody died.”

“If I find anything useful, I’ll probably get transferred. Away from you. Or I could get caught stealing the blood and get court-martialed and Razikale will get corrupted and there’ll be another Blight and the place they said Razikale sleeps is closer to Halamshiral than I’d like and I’ll be like dead or in prison and I won’t be able to get my mom out of there—”

“Sssssh. Come over here. We can plan the heist later. We’ll probably need Seryn for it, he’s the best at locks, so we’ll have to wait till he’s back from patrol anyway. Right now, we have this whole night, just you and me, and neither of us has anything we’re required to be at before ten in the morning.”

“You’re right. I am definitely worrying too much. My mother is certainly capable of getting out of town on her own ahead of an Archdemon. It’s probably easier to deal with than the canal mosquitoes.”

Laughing, Elgara let Nesha pull her back down into the pillows.

 

The heist itself was almost anticlimactic. Archdemon blood was stored in the restricted materials closet of the infirmary, along with opium, outgoing blood cultures and incoming serum doses, and other dangerous or sensitive materials. It was not unusual for Elgara to have a night shift there alone, when she was not in the field; she did not have the keys to the restricted materials closet, but that was what Seryn was for. As they had planned in whispers over lunch in the refectory, he had come to the infirmary late that night, feigning a stomachache.

“You could probably have just stuck a hairpin in there and jiggled it,” grumbled Seryn. “Not sure what you needed me or these picks for. Really, you guys should get a better one. A skilled lockpicker would still be able to break in, no one’s actually invented anything close to pick-proof yet that isn’t magically alarmed and those are expensive, but I’m surprised the opium hasn’t walked off the shelves a dozen times yet, with this crap trying to protect it.”

“Maybe it has and someone’s covering it up,” joked Nesha, from the door where she stood guard. She had not even needed an excuse to be here; everyone knew of her relationship with Elgara, and it was not uncommon for her to swing by, like this. Most healers hated being alone for night shifts. “Actually, we should probably check for that. There’s been fighting in Seheron—well, more than usual—and drought in Rivain, so it’s going a bit high on the black market. Not terribly high, but a bit more than usual. It’s the resin type, right? You’ll want a small sliver, the size of a grating of lemon peel. That’ll be enough for the guy I take it to to tell whether anyone’s mixed it with pine sap.”

“Here, I’ll get a clean scalpel,” said Elgara. “What do I put it in? A sample tube?”

“Sure, that should work,” said Nesha. Elgara hacked off a bit of resin and sealed it up. It did not smell piney, but then again, she had not worked with it enough to know what it should smell like, unheated. It was a medicine of last resort, since it was so much more addictive and expensive than elfroot.

“It’s probably fine,” reassured Nesha. “On the off chance it’s not, we can probably find out who and then spin it so you get promoted.”

“We really should hurry up,” said Seryn, nervously.

“Blood. Right,” said Elgara.

Like most dangerous or injectable liquid medications, Archdemon blood was stored in a glass bottle with a Rivain-gum seal—this one was brown, to protect the contents from light. One stuck a syringe needle through the gum, pulled the dose into the syringe, and then pulled the needle out, and the gum sealed the hole by itself. Unlike other such bottles, this one had been enchanted with the phylactery spell to keep its contents not just fresh but also living. Elgara wondered if it would glow in the presence of an Archdemon, the way real phylacteries had when mages had had them, back before she was born, or like the samples she took from Wardens to send to Amaranthine, though now the glow was mostly a sign that the spell had been done properly. Urthemiel was dead, of course, but who knew about other Archdemons? There were stories of phylacteries that reacted to close relatives of the person they had been made from, though less strongly. Elgara had never actually seen it happen, of course.

She pulled the syringe out. One dram. She injected it into a thick-walled, gum-sealed sample tube, and cast the phylactery spell. It did not glow. She could only guess by feel that she had done it properly. Handing the tube to Seryn, she opened the wet autoclave, pulled the syringe apart, and tossed all the pieces into the boiling water. Even in a facility inhabited only by Wardens, Archdemon blood was too dangerous to rinse down the drain first.

Elgara washed her hands and took back the tube. She sealed it again with melted wax, wiped down the outside with bleach solution, and finally put it in a small, padded cloth sack she had sewn in anticipation, to keep the light out and keep it from shattering. She handed it to Nesha, who (of course) tucked the thing in her breastband. Then she washed her hands again.

Seryn had already managed to re-lock the closet. Apparently, this was a little more difficult than unlocking it had been. “I should go now,” he said, eyes darting around the room. Always nervous, that man, though Elgara.

“Take this potion with you. It will make your excuse look authentic.”

Seryn eyed the chalky pink liquid dubiously.

“It’s just bismuth, bicarb, elfroot, and sugar. It actually doesn’t taste bad. Darkens your stools for a couple days, but it’s harmless. Take one dose for veracity, and just keep the rest around for if you actually get sick or something. It doesn’t spoil.”

“All right,” grumbled Seryn, putting it in his breeches pocket.

 

Now that Incaensor and Cuchillo had been Awakened and re-Joined as well, the childer could be trained together. They were also allowed free rein of the compound, with the instructions not to go further than the garden even at night, not to touch anything in the lab, and not to go within flame reach of the dragon pens. They now lived in the common room with the other Awakened darkspawn, claiming an alcove as their own. They did not need to sleep, of course, but they needed someplace to be when they were not training.

Spiders and their one other emissary, Frigor, and Felix had also been re-Joined. And that was as much blood as the Architect allowed them to use, for now. What happened almost immediately was that the emissaries’ magic drastically improved. Spiders managed to double his Dispel radius. Naturally, he then celebrated by summoning a spider the size of the common room, in the common room, while nearly everybody was in it. By the time Alim got down from the lab to see what the commotion was, Frigor had managed to kill the thing by freezing it rock solid and impaling it on a dozen giant icicles that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. He claimed he had been trying to cast Cone of Cold. First, Alim healed everyone; then, he tried to clean up the mess. Neither the spider nor the icicles would melt. He dispelled everything thoroughly, then tried setting it on fire. After about a minute of holding blue flame near one of the icicles, it finally began to drip. Frigor had simply frozen it that cold. He had always had a talent for and indeed an obsession with ice spells, but not like this.

It seemed that the Awakening severely limited an emissary’s ability to draw from the Void, even if it somewhat made up for that in will and imagination. Alim was going to have to spend months retraining them. Neither emissary had any idea quite how they had done it, either, especially Frigor. It seemed to be akin to a manifestation.

When he mentioned this to the Architect, the magister simply replied, “I thought it was merely that they were no longer guided by group instinct and had to rely on their own weaker minds.”

Of course he had thought that. They were just darkspawn, or just elves; always it was something like that. Not for the first time, Alim strongly considered murder. As usual, the main deterrent was that he would likely end up dead as well. “What’s that saying about ‘assumere’ and ‘assis’?” he asked at last.

“You may have noticed I said ‘putaveram,’” snipped the Architect.

“Qui false dicit putavisse est puta atqu’est mater ejus.”

“Pediceris!” hissed the Architect, flicking a bit of lightning in Alim’s direction. “Nequidemst illud recte dictu!”

“Mille verpae in se culum in saeculum saeculi!” yelled Alim, exiting the laboratory. He was not entirely sure that “se” was the right pronoun there, but “tuum” would have ruined the pun, for sure.

 

Alim avoided the Architect for several weeks. This was not hard; the Architect did not want to be anywhere near a slowly thawing room-sized dead spider. A dead summoned construct spider, which did not even have the sort of internal organs that usually caused dead things to smell, but nevertheless. Alim was using a very controlled application of Crushing Prison to hack the thing apart. It was still completely solid in the center by the time he finished.

The debacle did give him an idea for training, though. Spiders had been pretty good at summoning a wide array of small creatures even with a filter between him and the Void. He had simply had an uncanny talent for arachnids. Now that he could summon non-arachnids larger than a large cat, he could help create the perfect group hunting exercise. Alim convinced the Architect to grudgingly agree.

At night, Alim, Zevran, and the Architect led the four emissaries, Felix, and Cuchillo up to the first floor of the Tower of Ishal. Cuchillo had his new weapons: a sword and a long dagger. Felix had his usual sword and shield, and also a boar spear. All the mages had staves.

The idea was that Spiders would summon something and set it loose, taking care to give it weak spots similar to real organs, and all the darkspawn would fight as a coordinated group to try to kill it. Alim, Zevran, and the Architect were not to intervene except if someone were going to be killed otherwise. Alim nodded, and Spiders summoned a bear.

Chaos ensued.

The childer had only had weapons for a few weeks. They had done quite well in drills, but that is something very different from being in a closed room with an angry construct bear. Staves work best when one “flings” the spell off of them at a target, and both Mandrake and Incaensor had a good deal of trouble remembering to fling spells in the right direction. Then Mandrake tried to fling a shield spell instead of using a rooted stance. It landed perpendicular to the way it was supposed to face. When it predictably failed to stop the bear, he dropped the staff and encased himself in a shield bubble, on instinct. The bear ran into him, and he rolled around the floor.

Cuchillo had learned one lesson very well. He was supposed to get behind the thing and hamstring it. He was also supposed to be using stealth to do this. Instead, he kept flickering in and out of it. Meanwhile, Frigor kept casting pillars of ice and missing, since it was a spell that was slightly slower than the bear, so all Cuchillo ended up doing was chasing the bear around the room. Between the ice and the childer, it was running erratically enough that Spiders could not hit it either with the few offensive spells he had.

By this time, Felix had given up trying to use the boar spear. It kept running into the pillars of ice. He fell back on baiting and pulling his opponent, waving his sword and shield to get its attention. He was an experienced warrior, and it was a good strategy. It would have worked, except that everyone in the room was managing to be infinitely more interesting.

“Hex it!” yelled Alim, over the din of battle.

Spiders cast Walking Bomb. Incaensor lobbed something vaguely entropic the Architect had taught him and for once managed to hit. Frigor, who had natural entropy to go with ice, tried to cast Paralysis.

What he actually cast was Cloud of Death.

By the time Alim managed to dispel the resulting chaos, everyone was covered in ice chips and bits of construct (except for Mandrake, who had still been in the bubble when the spell combination had exploded).

“Okay, new rule. No blanket area-of-effect spells indoors.”

 

They did not practice group fighting again until Alim had made sure that Mandrake and Incaensor could hit clay pigeons with their staff bolts, and that Frigor would cast what he meant to and not what the magic itself wanted to do. Zevran simply kept drilling Cuchillo and Felix, training them to fight as a team.

“They are in tune with each other through the song, and very fast,” Zevran said, as Alim healed a shallow stab wound and a panoply of scrapes and bruises. Nothing particularly serious, but it was probably time for a hunt, once the sun set. Maybe just the two of them. Alim wondered how angry the Architect would be if they had sex in the abandoned temple without him.

“I mean, I thought I was fast,” continued Zevran. “I became even faster when I turned. But they move faster than I can blink!”

“Could this possibly have anything to do with how you weren’t born a darkspawn, and weren’t turned till you were past sixty-five?”

“…Possibly,” said Zevran.

“We’re a little structurally different than actual shrieks. Or sharlocks, I guess you could call them. Always wondered if the word came from ‘Shartan,’ you know, because he was an elf. It probably doesn’t. Du Loup complained in her last letter about how it’s always bugged her that the naming wasn’t consistent; that’s why I thought of it. It reminds me of this one Tevene verb conjugation—S’s drop out between vowels, so the second person singular in the era the Architect speaks like is just a weird diphthong, but then there was a lot of linguistic change in the chaos of the first few Blights, and suddenly the uncontracted form is back, because it sounds more like the others. I wonder if that will happen, with ‘sharlock.’”

“You were saying?”

“Assimilated conjugations in Tevene, Shartan, shrieks—right. The Taint tries to change us, but it never quite gets everything. It’s too used to existing in us from when we were mortals, maybe. Or maybe it’s something about Archdemon blood in us. I told Du Loup to look into that. So we’re shaped a little bit differently, even now, after going on thirteen years for me. It’s subtle, but it may affect what movements you’re capable of doing. Though, who knows if we’ll just mutate slowly but endlessly. Look at the Architect.”

“Long-term lyrium poisoning, from before?”

“I’ve scryed his head. Didn’t tell him, of course, just wondered if darkspawn could get tumors. I mean, his head’s really weird-shaped. I was bored. It’s partly weird bone, which would be about what you’d expect with catching the Blight with a fuckton of lyrium in your system, but a good amount of it is abnormal but stable brain matter, which seems like something only the Blight would do. Doesn’t seem to have made him smarter.”

Zevran laughed sharply, but ran his own hands over his bare skull.

“Relax. It’ll probably take several centuries, if it happens. We weren’t human, for one, and we didn’t break into the Fade while surrounded by piles of raw lyrium after eating the processed kind for months like soup, and we got the Blight by the Joining, not by touching the original source of it in the Black City.”

“We were both at Adamant.”

“Yes. We were. I don’t know how that affects things. Whether we’re…more like the Seven, that way, than another turned darkspawn might be.”

“I will not tempt death trying to find out,” promised Zevran, laughing again.

“And don’t tell the Architect.”

“I am not stupid. He already sees you as a threat.”

“I could bind him, given time, if I needed to. We have a little Archdemon blood left. Urthemiel’s, even, if I’m not mistaken. I’m not sure I could keep him from body-hopping entirely, but he might miss us.”

“How sure are you that even that would work?”

“Not entirely. Not very much, honestly. If it came to that, I’m not sure I’d have the time to do it. That’s why I put up with…he’s jealous of you.”

“I will be careful.”

“Thank you.” There was a long pause. Finally, Alim spoke again. “I should probably ask, while you’re here: are the herbs helping with the orichalcum problem?”

 

This time, Spiders summoned a large spider. He was good at that. It would be easier for Cuchillo to cripple its legs, anyway.

Mandrake shielded. Frigor cast Horror. Spiders drenched the thing with grease. Incaensor cast a whirlwind of fire. Within half a minute, the construct was a crisp. The mundane darkspawn had barely drawn their weapons.

“Very good,” called out Alim. “But the people with sharp things need practice, too. You should also start practicing with multiple targets, soon. If you use up your big spells on one opponent, the others will get you. Take fifteen to get your mana back, then we try again. Nothing that does worse than inconvenience it, this time.”

Spiders summoned another spider. Mandrake kept a shield around the mages and also bounced the spider away from Felix with tiny walls that popped up out of thin air. Frigor weakened it, slowed it down, confused it, occasionally stopped it for a few seconds. Incaensor periodically froze it to the floor—he was not as good at ice as Frigor was, but he was much better at ice than entropy.

Eventually, Cuchillo jumped on it and stabbed it where a real spider’s spine would be. It let out an amazingly realistic shriek and fell dead. Alim made a mental note to congratulate Spiders on his summoning. He could barely read, but he had remembered all the places where real spiders had weak points, and had incorporated them into his summon. Alim had known many mortal mages who would have flubbed that.

It was summer; the sun would rise soon.

“Enough for tonight!” yelled Alim. “Tomorrow, we start training with multiple targets.”

“And why do they need to be trained for multiple targets?” asked the Architect in a low voice, catching Alim alone as the rest, including Zevran, filed into the tunnels.

“In case we have a situation where they need to fight multiple targets. The Legion, for example. Or Wardens not allied with us. Or darkspawn trying to get at Razikale, before we’re ready. We will probably have to hold them back in order to inoculate Razikale before they corrupt her, you know. Why are you asking?”

“I think you know perfectly well why. I agree that such exercises are necessary, and that they are better trained than I would have had them, but they should be given orders by me, not you, when it concerns anything other than instantly relevant strategy.”

“Because you were a military expert in ancient Tevinter, obviously.”

“Civil Engineer. The Cult of Lusacan was responsible for the military and defense.”

“My point exactly. I’ll have you know, drills do not end simply because soldiers get tired. Especially with early trainees, they lose focus after a certain point, and they become recalcitrant and dread future drills more, or they just make fatally stupid mistakes. With darkspawn, it takes longer, but it was getting there.” Alim paused, and then continued, as the thought occurred to him: “Did you even notice it was getting towards dawn, too? Or care, since you can go out in it?”

“Yes,” replied the Architect, turning away. Alim could not tell if the word was truth or a lie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A dram is one-eighth of an ounce, or a quarter tablespoon. The only time I've ever seen anyone use it as an actual unit of measure is on a bottle of mint oil for flavoring food. It was a really tiny bottle. However, somewhere in the World of Thedas books, it says that only a single drop of Archdemon blood is used per batch of Joining, because it has an immeasurably high concentration of the Taint--and, no doubt, because it's hard to get and preserve the stuff, and no one knows how long it will be between Blights. It was about four hundred years between the Fourth Blight and the Fifth. (Btw, talk about the symbolism of Andoral being slain by an elf.)
> 
> Also, the opium sample turns out to be completely legit. Elgara does "accidentally" destroy the lock with a chemical spill a few months later, and the entire door gets replaced.
> 
> The potion is, of course, high fantasy pepto-bismol. Which is pretty close to magic even in its earthly form, honestly.
> 
> Spell stances: not really addressed in canon, but I headcanon (and it's supported by combat animation) that different kinds of spells use different stance. These are probably mostly mnemonics of what the intent of the spell is, combined with actual offensive and defensive staff maneuvers. And it appears, in game, that you have to point your staff in the general direction of your target to cast basic staff bolts, or stuff like Stonefist. For an earthquake, though, you might want to mentally connect yourself to the ground and brace yourself for balance, while raising your staff and focusing on the target area, and then slamming it down to release the spell. Inferno, Blizzard, Tempest, and barriers (as opposed to personal shields) would be similar.
> 
> So, the spell combination: Death Hex + Cloud of Death = Entropic Death, which causes a lot of damage instantly. Incaensor's hex is close enough to Death Hex to trigger the combination. Meanwhile, if a target dies while affected by Walking Bomb--as it might, if it's not at full health and then suffers Entropic Death--it will explode, with the potential for friendly fire. This is what happens. Keep in mind that Cloud of Death also creates zero visibility in its area of effect. Everything goes dark and explodes, basically.
> 
> That grammar stuff Alim is talking about? That's actually the Greek verb of being and I think also the general passive voice, though I'd have to look that up. I've had Tevene as mostly Latin, but they've probably borrowed some stuff here and there. Basically, the singular used to go "ἐμαι, ἐσαι->εἰ, ἐστι(ν)," with the sigma in the second person dropping out because there was a rule in greek that intervocalic sigmas do that, but then, probably mostly due to being invaded and occupied by the Ottoman empire for several hundred years, it got put back in because it sounded more like the first person, and also the infinitive somehow got used as the third person singular, and some vowels lengthened while they were at it, so in Modern Greek it's "εἰμαι, εἰσαι, εἰναι." That is, if you bother to even use the breathing marks anymore, and most people don't.
> 
> Yeah, Alim and Zevran were at Adamant with the Inquisition to try to de-escalate the situation, and they ended up in the Fade. Whether this means they can body-hop like the Seven remains to be seen. I am going to leave this an open question in this work, because I don't freaking know, and I don't want to kill either of them even temporarily. Having Zevran stop breathing for several minutes during his transformation was quite enough of that.


	26. Raising Stakes and Dragons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A day in the life of Elgara Du Loup. The darkspawn make--well, confirm--a breakthrough in the effort to save Razikale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title's a zeugma. Don't you love zeugmas?

It was not the position she wanted, but it would let her do what she needed.

Her paper (really Surana’s ideas, but she had done nearly all the real work) on “Reaver Chimerism” had gotten a significant amount of critical attention. She had excised the section on Archdemons from the academically published version, but had sent it to Weisshaupt and the Serault Research Outpost. One week after the bare minimum of time required to send mail to Weisshaupt and back, Elgara received transfer orders to Serault—effective immediately.

Nesha had not been reassigned. Elgara had credited her as her research assistant, and truthfully so, but Weisshaupt had not thought her important enough, it seemed, or had considered her skill as a warrior to outweigh her alchemical potential. It was probably a fair decision. Nesha was now applying to be transferred to Val Royeaux, but Elgara would be well settled in Serault before she got an answer. She would miss Nesha. They had grown close, these last few years, becoming bonded over their shared secret, as well as just sex and companionship.

Elgara’s research was considered too speculative to be given a full research grant, at least until the next budget review; moreover, actually funding it as a Warden project would risk revealing secrets. Less “reveal” than “cause speculation that would probably lead to a number of shrewd academics figuring them out,” really. Rather, she had been appointed as a university recruiter for the Wardens, with access to both the Wardens’ and the school’s laboratories—the sort of job an upwardly mobile Orlesian-born Warden researcher might voluntarily apply for, if they were angling for a full research appointment but did not have the standing to get one yet.

So now, on her thirteenth day at her new job, she sat in a college office, behind a desk sized for humans, trying not to swing her legs as her toes dangled, barely brushing the floor. A teenaged elf sat on the other side of the desk, clutching a slightly crumpled sheaf of cheaply printed papers. Serault had started admitting civilian Orlesian elves as students just last year, under threat of stricter dissection and magic regulations, providing those elves passed a particularly stringent placement exam. It was of course a ploy to keep out as many elves as possible while complying with the letter of the law, but it was definitely a start. Eventually, things would change. So Elgara hoped.

“So if I pledge to join the Wardens after graduation they’ll pay my tuition, but I might die,” said the young man.

“It is unlikely,” said Elgara, a touch more reassuringly than was perhaps entirely accurate. “We overhauled the formula for the Joining a few decades ago to make it safer, and even now we’re researching dragon blood treatments before the Joining to further reduce risk. Most of the rumors you’ve heard come from the version used before the late forties, which had a very high attrition rate. With the isolation of miasmas, it has become possible to make it less toxic; ninety-five percent survive, at a conservative estimate, with a competent healer attending. That’s not much worse than training accidents in other similarly competitive military programs.”

“It says here though that it can also make you sick for months?” said the elf. He had been shuffling through the packet of recruitment pamphlets; Elgara saw, upside down, that the one now on top was headed with block letters reading “The Joining and You.”

“That’s also pretty rare. Look, I was a healer before I was posted here. Once in a while, someone ends up with persistent fevers from the Taint. It usually clears up in a few months, on its own. It’s not even as bad as the common cold. It’s also getting less common, as laboratory technology improves. In the last several years, it’s maybe one in ten. Yes, I looked this up.”

“I’ll think about it, then. I can afford to pay for this semester. It’s the next one I don’t know about. But I’ll have made a decision by then.”

“Best of luck,” said Elgara, getting up and opening the door. Heavy, old wood.

“Oh, by the way, it’s apple pie day in the café today. I work part-time there. I’m pretty sure I smelled the cook using real cinnamon.”

“I’ll take that under advice for dinner tonight,” said Elgara, before she turned back to her desk.

 

The apple pie did indeed have real cinnamon. It was so good that Elgara paid a few coppers for a cardboard clamshell to take some extra slices with her, and filled her thermos with the bulk-brewed and probably mildly toxic tea-and-coffee mix ubiquitous to college cafes and mess halls across Thedas. Then she trekked back to the Warden laboratories, to work half the night. One of the perks of being a Warden was the ability to work on four hours of sleep per night for near perpetuity. Another, she thought as she shifted the container from one hand to another, was the near-inability to overeat.

Of course, that was paired with the demand to eat more than a physiologically similar non-Warden member of one’s species. Half the trendy “quick foods” in shops these days, such as biscuits one could eat in place of breakfast, were designed to aid weight loss. Being a Warden who was constantly running places with only odd hours for meals, Elgara had tried such things and found them worse than useless. Better to pour a few tablespoons of sweetened canned milk in hot coffee to fuel getting dressed, and then buy real food from street vendors, on days when her schedule did not line up with mess hall hours.

Currently, she was really running two experiments at once. One was the effects of dragon blood consumption on the rate of Joining complications. The number of recorded reavers who had become Wardens was small, perhaps in the low dozens for confirmed cases, but even in that small pool it seemed that they had dramatically improved chances of surviving even the traditional Joining. There were nine who had been joined via the Surana Joining (all had survived it), with four currently living; she had interviewed those four by letter, and none had reported even minor complications. None of the deceased five had any mentioned in their records. It seemed that being a draconid chimera gave one an advantage to the chance of a new Blight infection becoming both chronic and asymptomatic.

The other experiment—well, series of experiments—had to do with the parasitization and metastasis of live draconid vivicula in mammals. Live dragon vivicula were nearly impervious to stomach acid, and migrated from the digestive tract to other parts of the body when consumed. (Cooked ones were inert and digested as easily as any other meat, though dragon flesh needed to be heated internally to the boiling point of water in order to be cooked.) Unlike cancers, these vivicula divided slowly and did not cause pain or illness, though test animals did seem to be more susceptible to diseases carried by birds and reptiles. When placed in a slurry of live-heat mammalian blood and flesh, draconid vivicula grew flagella and sought out nerve tissue, or, when that was colonized to a certain level, skin. Place a drop of dragon’s blood at the edge of the largest size culture dish, with a sliver of sheep’s brain at the edge opposite it, and in a few hours one could remove the slice and stain it with a  dye that adhered only to draconid vivicula, and it would appear speckled under the micropter, like the ceiling of a barn in summer is speckled with flyspots.

Of course, it took longer in live animals. Elgara was now grafting bits of dragon into cat-sized monkeys imported from Rivain. That was another thing; animals almost never rejected grafted dragon flesh. People usually rejected grafts of skin or other flesh unless it was taken from a close blood relative, and even sometimes then. It was a serious issue, in a glassmaking city like Serault, where half the workforce worked with hot glass or other substances; serious burns were common and a great cause of death or acquired disability. One of Elgara’s colleagues was working on the problem; in a similar process to isolating the BRF, it was possible to isolate resistance factors to incompatible flesh from people, and test those against someone’s blood. The trouble was that it took too long to use in emergency situations, which was of course usually the case when such a test was needed. Preemptive testing was a possibility, of course, but most people would not think of or be able to afford such a thing, and it too closely recalled the infamous practice of mage phylacteries.

But dragon flesh was never rejected. At first the graft would seem to be absorbed the way incompatible mammalian cells would be, but then when the animal was sacrificed a few weeks later, about the right quantity of vivicula would be found in its brain and spine, with some attrition mostly accounted for by the number of nerves in the rest of the body. If such an animal was kept alive and given a skin graft of dragon under-skin, it would not be absorbed, but would start growing scales at the graft site once it healed.

Elgara walked into the lab’s locker room and changed into autoclaved lab robes and slippers. The door she then entered was labeled with a skull and bones. This was where the Wardens worked with live Blight cultures. Wardens had little to fear from it, but the building was in a busy part of a fairly large city. Care had to be taken that the most lethal miasma in all history was not tracked out of the lab, or that visiting researchers and students did not accidentally wander in. The first door opened onto a hall, and was two-way. The second door, into the lab proper, was one-way. The only way out was through a disinfecting shower. Used lab robes went down a laundry chute into a vat of boiling, bleach-filled water. By some artifice Elgara did not completely understand, the room was kept so air did not go out of it unless ventilated through a special filter, only in. It was really the ultimate in laboratory architecture.

Elgara plonked her thermos and box of pie onto the lab counter, and went to check on her monkeys. Lately, she had been injecting some with pure live Blight miasma. The next series would be susceptibility to realistic environmental exposure, but for now she wanted guaranteed infection. Casting Paralysis on each monkey so they could not bite her, she took their vitals and drew blood.

The monkeys that were dragon chimerae had gotten sick the fastest, but over the last few days their levels had mostly stabilized. Only one had developed the characteristic lesions seen in Blight-infected mammals, out of twenty. (She would have preferred a larger sample of monkeys, but the creatures were expensive, and her commanding officer was already complaining.) Meanwhile, of the control group of ten, two had died in the last day (in addition to the four from previous days), one seemed to be wasting without outward lesions, two were in the classic primate “quiet death” spiral, and one had the lesions and aggression (but relatively stable) illness course. All of these in both groups without any of the mitigating agents used in the Joining, of course.

Elgara re-paralyzed one of the chimera monkeys and scryed it. It seemed to have clusters of more concentrated Blight in various places around its body, particularly in its brain and spine. That corresponded with the dragon vivicula that must have migrated there, and which attracted the Taint to form a sort of symbiosis, as she had seen in the Blighted drakes that Surana and the others had kept. The miasma reproduced densely in the dragon flesh, but it did not ravish the body. What was it about the Blight and dragons? She and Surana were both trying to figure it out. It was a fair bet, however, that it would improve results to drink or inject dragon blood a month or so before the Joining. Perhaps in a year or two she would get permission to experiment on recruits.

Elgara thought back to the boy who had come to her office earlier that day. Perhaps he would be among those who benefitted. Still, it was live Blight miasma. She had not lied to him, exactly, but there would probably never be a version of the Joining that was entirely safe.

 

“The problem is that we can’t really handle the dragons without infecting them,” said Alim. “We have to have uninfected ones to test the new serum. None of us want to risk using it on Razikale unless we’re absolutely sure it works.”

“Send letters to our allies, then,” replied the Architect. “All of them. Dragons are no small matter.”

“And there is no guarantee they’ll all be given furlough for the time requested,” added Zevran. “Two of them might be enough, especially if at least one is a mage. I would prefer Du Loup, who has the alchemical knowledge, plus any of the warriors.”

“It’s called ‘vitology’ now, remember. The last journal said so. ‘Microvitology,’ for what she does, specifically, or what we do.”

“Right. Alchemy just means dead atoms, now. I am not sure why that’s the difference, because alchemical compounds affect living matter. I really do think it should have been compounding alchemy versus vital alchemy. Anyway, to return to the subject of dragons, we will also need a temporary compound somewhere slightly less Blighted. Preserving the serum and carrying it to the Frostbacks near the Augur’s compound would be both that and near a dragon habitat.”

“Good idea,” said Alim. “Ferelden Frostbacks are diurnal. Thus, we will be able to catch some fairly easily at night. Drakes. I do not want to have to fight a high dragon unless I have to. It would also be the least distance for Du Loup to travel. I will write her asking when the next academic break is.”

“You do that,” said the Architect.

Zevran and Alim spent the next few hours writing letters. The Architect claimed he did not really know how to write in modern Trade or Orlesian without embarrassing himself by his handwriting.

“My handwriting is probably worse than yours,” said Zevran, who had taught himself to write by copying the shapes of letters in antique block-font poison textbooks. “If we cared about handwriting, Alim would be doing it all himself.”

The Architect glared at him and disappeared somewhere to sulk.

 

“I don’t know about you, but I am not hunting dragons at night.”

Right. Mortals could not see in the dark. Somehow, all of the darkspawn had forgotten this. Elgara was standing arms akimbo, and the rest did not look much happier. Hammet and Donnell. Those were the other two.

“Would you rather hunt sleeping dragons, or awake dragons?” asked Alim, trying to be conciliatory.

“Sleeping, obviously. I just wish I’d been told.”

“I suppose I should have specified. I forgot why mortals don’t do things at night, besides sleeping.”

“Is that an example or a reason?”

“Both, honestly.”

“Will they wake up if we take a lantern or glowstone in?”

“Lantern, possibly, glowstone, no. We’ve found dragons can’t see purple. To be fair, that was only the Blighted ones, and I suppose it’s possible that clutch was atypically colorblind, because the ones we have are all the same clutch, but we made a purple glowstone.”

“If you forgot about the dark—?”

“Well, they’re all in caves, anyway. Even we like light for anything involving detail. We can probably make it go brighter, though.”

“Great. Dragons in caves.” And Nesha wasn’t even here. She could have gone to Val Royeaux for her holiday, but no, here she was in the Frostbacks, without her girlfriend, hunting dragons in caves.

“Just paralyze them and drag them out, with magic. If anything wakes up and you can’t subdue it within three seconds, kill it. This breed is vulnerable to ice magic, in particular.”

“We have cleaned the pens with bleach, boiling water, and lye,” added the Architect. “They currently should be uncontaminated.”

“The idea is to bring back a few dragons today, and if they do not sicken, bring back more,” said Alim. “You will have to perform the injections on them. Us touching them is too risky.”

There were general nods from the group of Wardens.

“Why couldn’t I do this in my lab, on lizards?” muttered Elgara, as they descended into the lower caves.

 

They found a clutch of drakelings a few hours into their descent. Hammet cast mass paralysis, and then the problem was getting them back to the pens in the upper caves. Donnell, of all people, had the idea to put them into shield bubbles and roll them.

“That way, even if they wake up, they can’t get us,” he said.

Two days later, the drakelings still had not sickened. They retrieved the rest of the drakelings and added them in as well.

“Why clean with lye?” Hammet asked, watching all seventeen drakelings tearing into a bear the mages had killed. “I’ve been thinking about that for days.”

“Isn’t it usually bleach?” said Donnell.

“Yeah, I wondered about that, too,” added Elgara. “It usually is bleach. Acid kills most miasmata. Though…Merde. Everyone knows darkspawn blood is acidic. Slightly less than bleach, I think, but I’m going to have to test how well it actually works.”

“Fuck. If bleach isn’t effective…” Donnell trailed off.

“We haven’t had any accidents so far, at the Serault labs, so I don’t think it’s useless, but Maker, if there’s something more effective, we should be using it. That’s the third largest city in Orlais, and people are traveling in and out of it all the time. A real outbreak there could be as bad as an actual Blight, more or less.”

“Do you think Surana knows?”

“Not sure. Could be that it’s just a very strong caustic agent, anyway, and he’s not taking any chances. Like I said, I’ll test it.”

 

Inoculating the drakelings had been easy. The darkspawn had etched a paralysis glyph into the ceiling, painted with lyrium and keyed to dragonkind, before they had cleaned it, so all they had to do was activate it. Whether Wardens were chimerae or not (as Elgara considered), it did not seem to be affecting them.

The serum, Alim had told them, contained resistance factor, _S. korcariensis_ extract, heat-killed actual miasma, and a few preservatives. It had seemed to work on mammals, but the darkspawn had not been able to test it on dragons or any other reptile yet.

(Well, they had tried on a couple of snakes, but those had gotten loose and one was definitely eaten by the pigs and the rest were never seen again.)

The doses were quite large. These were only drakelings, and Surana had insisted on three-quarters of an ounce each. Seventeen times (for it turned out Elgara was the only one who knew how to give injections), she shoved a diamond-tipped needle through scales and into muscle, pulled the plunger to make sure she had not hit a vein, and slowly pushed the dose home. With the first one, the serum began to leak out of the needle stick; then, and for the rest, she healed the skin as soon as the needle came out.

 

Three days. Soon their furloughs would be over, and the Wardens would have to go back to their normal lives. They reported that the dragons had been a bit lethargic since their inoculations but had not sickened; they had managed to keep the serum uncontaminated, then.

The real test would have to be now. The darkspawn would handle the dragons, and see if any turned.

The Architect activated the paralysis glyph, just before he walked into the pen. He and Alim and Zevran walked among the frozen dragons, stroked them; Zevran even sat on one. Alim took off his outer robe and waved it around the pen; he breathed into the dragons’ faces. Then, he licked his hand and rubbed it over the dragon’s open eyes.

“That’s disgusting,” said the Architect.

“What? It’s not like I licked the dragon.” Then he took a grease pencil out of his pocket and marked the dragon with a sign shaped like a crude eyeball, for the method of exposure. If this one sickened, or sickened first, he would know.

“I’ll lick a dragon,” said Zevran. Then, more loudly, to the Wardens who were watching, “Someone dare me to lick a dragon!”

“Don’t do that,” said Alim. “The scales are like directional sandpaper. Lick them at anything other than just the right angle, and you’ll rip the skin of your tongue off.”

“I dare you to lick a dragon!” yelled Hammet.

“Oh for Maker’s sake, don’t,” Alim huffed.

Too late. Zevran bent down and licked the dragon.

“Gugh. Tha is dishgushing. I think thash chragon shih.”

“You cut your tongue, didn’t you.”

“Yesh.”

Alim flicked a healing spell his way. “Now wipe the blood on a dragon, at least.”

 

One day. Two days. The drakelings were still fine. The Wardens had to go home, now. The darkspawn stayed and waited.

Five days. Seven. They had definitely been exposed, more than exposed, but they still remained uninfected. Alim scryed the drakelings, checking for evidence of reservoir conditions; there were none. There was nothing of the Void in them. Fourteen days. Twenty-one. Still nothing.

“Maybe we should try again,” Alim suggested. “Inject them with small amounts of our blood, even. They had a loading dose of resistance factor; that should be wearing off by now. I want to see if we can induce true immunity.”

“Feeding them Blighted meat would be easier,” said the Architect.

“Ooh, true. Let’s do that.”

They Blighted the next batch of animals to feed to the drakelings. The drakelings gobbled them up, and the darkspawn waited.

Only two turned.

Why those two? There was no way of knowing. Perhaps it was chance. The will of the Maker, the wind-tossed arrows of Falon’Din, the fire-breath of Zazikel. They dissected and took samples from both of the ones that had succumbed, and three of the ones that had not, and released the rest. Perhaps once they were back at Ostagar their equipment would reveal something, but Alim felt that all that would be was “how much” or “what,” not “why.”

All they could do now was erase the traces of their presence and return to Ostagar. There, they would try to reduce the fluid volume of the serum while keeping its effectiveness, and wait for the horde to get close to Razikale. Alim and Zevran snuck into the nearest village to post a letter to Du Loup with the preliminary results of the experiment, and then all three of them left.

 

They walked in, and found a strange figure standing in the center of the lab. Zevran drew his weapons and leapt, and both Alim and the Architect cast paralysis glyphs, but the intruder simply cast a shield and shrugged them off. Laying down his staff, he put his hands behind his head as a gesture of peace.

Zevran sheathed his weapons, and the other two lowered their staves. The man before them let the shield drop.

“Who are you?” asked the Architect, in Trade.

“I am Issus Eyras, and I am here on behalf of the Watchman of Lusacan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am totally being salty about the US education system and programs like ROTC. 1000% salty. So much sodium. Also, Elgara's office is based on the professors' offices in Thomas Hall at Bryn Mawr College--specifically, second floor, on the right side from the main entrance. I spent a lot of time in a slightly lower-stakes version of the chair that teenage elf is in.
> 
> The "how to get enough calories for breakfast" thing is real. Especially if you can't have eggs and you have digestive problems. With Wardens, the issue is the Blight mucking up your metabolism, but the difficulties are similar. Elgara, like me, is one of those people who can't think enough to cook until after they have breakfast, which presents the obvious problem of "how the fuck are you going to get breakfast"? The Warden outpost has a mess hall, but her only available lab hours run really late, so she usually sleeps through that. Plus sometimes she works shifts at the college infirmary for a little extra pay, because the recruiting job is part-time and kind of a pay cut from the full-time Assistant Healer position she had at Soldier's Peak.
> 
> Negative pressure lab rooms and decontamination protocols--hell yeah. (Yes, I've read Hot Zone. The Taint is a level 3 or 4 pathogen. Better to treat it like level 4, because at this point there isn't really a vaccine that doesn't have a decent risk of killing you. The Surana Joining is a lot better than the traditional one, but it wouldn't exactly pass FDA safety testing. The anti-Blight serum they're using on the dragons later...more like it.) And then Elgara can just totally plonk her carryout clamshell on the counter, because she's "immune" to this stuff, she could put darkspawn blood in her coffee for all she cares. (Well, it's still neurotoxic, but she'd survive.)
> 
> Dragons are basically made of magic, ok? And part of that is that they're physically immunocompatible with everything. Part of that's just their physical makeup, in my universe, but if necessary they can probably also just Jedi mind-wave your T cells.
> 
> As in the Pern series, dragons can see heat. (Though, that was watch-weyrs, there.) The things live in caves. There's no need for them to see anything even close to ultraviolet, but there is a need to see heat. So I guess their eyes specialize that way. Purple glowstones won't wake the dragons, but the humans and elves (well, one elf) can see.
> 
> There really isn't a reason why two of the dragons succumb. Most vaccines have some failure rate. Repeated doses would be ideal, but they're not going to have that chance with Razikale. Save it for the eventual human trials.
> 
> And...cliffhanger! I suggesting finding a copy of the Dragon Age RPG. Eyras shows up in the campaign "Autumn Falls." You can probably find a copy online, somewhere, of questionable legality.


	27. "Issues Arras"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The significance of last chapter's mystery intruder is revealed. Shocking truths about the Last Moon. Among the trio, tension builds. (The Architect is a bit of an ass.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm hoping I spelled "arras" right. It's a sort of tapestry. Also, the Last Moon is from the Dragon Age Tabletop RPG, in the "Autumn Falls" campaign.

“Could you spell that, please?” asked Alim. People simply were not named ‘Issues Arras,’ or ‘Arrest,’ or ‘Iris’—well, okay, maybe ‘Iris,’ but not ‘Issues,’ and that was all he could come up with from what he had heard, at least in Trade. Though of course, it was possible that the name was not Trade at all.

“I-S-S-U-S-space-E-Y-R-A-S,” said the man. And yes, that _was_ a Tevene accent. “My name is Issus Eyras. Your acolyte said you were on a journey, but let me in.”

Zevran had been thinking hard for the thirty seconds or so since the man had first spoken. Now his face darkened with recognition.

“Wait. Aren’t you one of those cultists who tried to blow up a tourney with gaatlok, a few years back? Most of the charges were disabled before they went off, but a number of people still died from those that were not. What are you doing here?”

“What?” asked Alim.

“Some violent Tevinter supremacist cult called ‘The Last Moon.’ ‘Spread night over the whole world,” or something. I was at that tourney, that is how I remember. Cults like that are a dime a dozen, though. Most of them are not that organized, however, or that…inspired in their destruction.”

“Yes, that was partly my doing,” said Eyras. “We wanted to cause chaos and terror in our name; it attracts new members. As for why blow up an entire tourney, and that particular tourney, there were several high-profile Wardens competing. We consider them a threat to our purpose.”

“High-profile Wardens. You mean me, then,” said Zevran. “I will add a notch to the number of assassination attempts I have survived. Though, it was poor planning to try to explode the stadium the day _after_ the dagger-wrestling proving I was competing in. Which I won,” he added, a tad smugly. “First place in the over-fifties. Third overall."

“You are _Ser_ Arainai, then?” asked Eyras, as if he found the title ironic. He probably did, given that Zevran was an elf. “It is true we hoped you would be caught in the blast, but you were not actually the main target. Your protégé was, and she was fighting as a battlemage in the Grand Melee.”

“In any case, why are you here?” asked Alim, switching to Tevene; Eyras might be easier to understand in that tongue, he hoped. “Do you have any idea of the danger to yourself? I am surprised you haven’t contracted the Taint by now. Unless you’re a Warden, and from what you’ve just said, that sounds unlikely.”

“My master allowed me to be granted the test given to his most loyal followers. Those who have passed it are immune to corruption and granted strength and endurance beyond that of mortal men. Thus it was I who was sent here.”

“And your master is the Watchman of Lusacan? What was that test?”

“He is; but it is not permitted to me to speak of it.”

“Let me guess. He had you drink his blood, mixed with lyrium, and some herbs you do not recognize.”

“If you have somehow renounced the Last Moon and lived—”

“No; that is how one becomes a Warden, more or less. You are, save for jurisdiction and a few small details of magic, a Warden. What did you experience, after this test? Strange dreams? Diminished sleep? Increased appetite but no weight gain, perhaps even loss of weight? Slight fevers, perhaps? Heightening of senses?”

“How—? No dreams, but the rest…”

“…Is what Wardens experience, particularly in the first year after their Joining. I don’t know how the process differs for the Last Moon, because it seems at the very least that no Archdemon blood is involved and thus no blood binding for them, but otherwise it appears nearly identical to the traditional Warden Joining. Including the lethality, if I take your meaning correctly. Almost any Warden living today has been joined by a newer, safer version, because pure darkspawn blood contains poisons that will kill you before the Taint does, in many cases. Instead, we use the miasma itself.”

Eyras pursed his lips, considering. “They serve you, Domine?” he asked the Architect, raising his head so that the height difference made clear to whom he spoke.

“Yes,” said the Architect.

“Then my master may have mercy upon me for speaking. We who are commanded to attempt the test seclude ourselves for purification at the dark of the moon, and live on bread, water, and vegetables. We also each day drink a small amount of dragon’s blood. When the necessary number of days has passed, we are brought forth on the night of the full moon to be given the grace to drink his blood, that those who are truly worthy may be guided by him even from afar. The unworthy or treacherous perish in this attempt. The contents of the potion given, beyond his blood, are a mystery even to me, but I thought I smelled embrium, and any mage knows the taste of lyrium.

“This draught burnt my mouth and throat, and seized with faintness I fell to the ground thinking I had perished, but then some while later I awoke, and the mercy of my master smiled upon me.”

“Lyrium and embrium. Those are in the traditional Joining. And the herb known as ‘salvator korcariensis,’ which you would not recognize from elsewhere, due to its rarity in the north, but which we have samples of its essence here.” Alim strode over to a shelf of small bottles, and returned with one. “Uncork this and smell it. It is toxic to darkspawn on contact, or I would have done. Harmless to mortals, if you do not ingest it in quantity.”

Issus Eyras uncorked the bottle and gave it a sniff, then hesitantly touched the tip of his tongue to the cork.

“Yes,” he said, closing the bottle again. “I think this was in it. At the very least, it is definitely not something that could not have been in it. Do you want this back?” he asked, holding out the closed bottle.

“Yes, I’ll take it,” said Alim, pulling his sleeve over his hand to touch the bottle safely.

“Thank you for not planning to poison us,” observed Zevran, as Alim returned it to the shelf.

“My mission is peaceful for now,” said Eyras, a bit absently. “So I’m essentially a Warden. And yet the Wardens are supposed to be antithetical to the will of the god Lusacan. Are they simply a heretical cult, underneath their public exterior, or…what gives? I should not doubt the will of my master or his god, but I had thought I was in high enough confidence for him to tell me.”

“The Wardens are not a cult,” said Alim.

“Mostly,” put in Zevran.

“But, it is entirely possible that the Watchman does not know the specifics of our Joining, either one of them. I think he may realize that the process is similar, since the point is to be able to come into contact with darkspawn without contracting the rapid form of the Blight and dying, but I think the antipathy has to do with purpose, not the chronic Taint infection. Which, yes, you have, sorry to give you the news that way.

“Wardens are sworn to eliminate the Archdemons. We—they, I really am not one now—would kill them preemptively, if they could; it’s just they’re under a lot of darkspawn and rock. The Watchman wants Lusacan to rule the world forever, from what Zevran said, so obviously he wants him to survive. Magically, Wardens are bound to the Blight as a whole and to all the Archdemons, while I think you are bound specifically to the Watchman. You haven’t been having dreams about the Archdemons, and a mage Warden certainly would, and it’s unlikely that the Watchman could get either real Archdemon blood or Lusacan’s own blood, since Lusacan remains uncorrupted. It’s possible that your Joining contained blood from an infected ordinary dragon, though; but with all the other dragon blood, I’m not sure that would be necessary. Also, you should know this: if the Watchman dies, his soul could possess your body and make it take on his form, because of that binding.” Alim deliberately neglected to mention that this applied to all Wardens and Tainted humans as well.

“I have sworn to give my life for the Watchman and Lusacan, and that is just in a slightly different way from what others I have imagined,” said Eyras. A fanatic, then. An intelligent fanatic, too, which could be even more dangerous.

“As for the process itself,” continued Alim, “it’s almost stupidly easy to stumble onto, provided you’re willing to kill enough people in trying. Anyone who saw an infected dragon, such as Dumat, even, might realize that dragons have a special physical and magical coexistence with the Blight. They become infected easily, but do not waste and die like mammals are prone to. Further, not all mammals do end up wasting; some will be visibly infected but strong and aggressive. It is possible, though extremely rare, for a mammal to develop a reservoir condition similar to the way that a dragon often does. Essentially, if they can do it, there must be some way that we can, and on purpose.

“Now, the Wardens focused on forming a binding to Dumat. I think they originally intended to snare his soul via a ritual involving mass suicide. So, the focus was on surviving the initial infection and having a few years before becoming fulminant. Essentially, this meant chemically crippling darkspawn blood and adding antidotes to its toxins so that one didn’t always die instantly. Essentially, this gives the body time to make its own resistance. You of the Last Moon, though…the ingestion of dragon blood suggests that the Watchman decided to make you as draconic as possible without growing scales, seeing the example of dragons, so that instead of just resistance, the infection is kept in check by confining it to the dragon flesh growing within your body. The natural resistance from the anthropoid parts of you can grow more slowly, so fewer chemical checks are needed—less lyrium, less Wild’s Flower, less arsenic, less mercury, and so on. This would increase the initial survival rate a little, though with a slightly higher risk of being able to spread the Taint to others.”

“I know of no cases of that happening.”

“It would be unlikely, after the first few years. Still, try not to get your head bashed open in front of anybody or anything. Your brain and spine are probably full of the Taint in concentrations higher than Wardens prior to secondary miasmatic amplification, because you’ve got bits of dragon growing on your nerve tissue.”

“Huh?”

Alim gave him a summary of Du Loup’s research.

“But the real question still stands,” said the Architect, after Alim finished. “Why are you here?”

“The Watchman has heard rumors of your work to prevent the corruption of Razikale. And he has sent me to tell you to stop.”

“To stop? Why?”

“‘Till the night covers all,’” said Eyras. “Lusacan the divine must become one with the Blight and lead it to mastery over all the earth. The other six will fail but prepare the way. If you manage to stop Razikale’s corruption, you would be ‘throwing a wrench’ in that, as the phrase goes in Trade, I think. Quite a vivid image; the crudity of that tongue does have some advantage. If Razikale is not infected, or if Lusacan is infected first, the divine plan may never be carried out.”

“The divine plan requires nearly all mortals to die,” pointed out the Architect. “I tried a similar scheme once, and it turns out that most of the mortals prefer even the constant antagonism between our races to the prospect of such wholesale decimation. I was also later informed that most of the survivors of such a thing become infertile.”

“Most Wardens cannot have children,” clarified Alim. “I had one, but I had been infected for less than a year, at the time, and never tried again. And it is the infection, not the method; there is little appreciable difference between Wardens Joined by either process, in that regard. If the entirety of the world were put through anything like the ‘test’ that you were, not only would most not survive, but so few would be able to reproduce after that all life but darkspawn would go extinct within a few centuries afterwards.”

“You assume Lusacan and the Watchman want everyone to be infected. The test is only for the highest levels of the faithful. Lusacan will reign and his night will cover the earth, and the believers will be protected in special cities while the will of Lusacan keeps his dark children separate. Those blessed enough to be Tested will rule them then, and they in turn will be the ferrymen between the lay believers and the true Children of Night.”

“We are not stopping,” said the Architect. “The Augur of Razikale wishes her preservation, and an end to the Blights; I am allied with her. I do not know how the Watchman discovered what we are doing, but he would do well to leave us alone. You may stay here till morning, but then you must leave. Tell your master that he can, in fact, take no for an answer.”

 

Eyras had been sleeping on the ground floor of the Tower of Ishal; this was good, because at least they did not have to force the issue of banning him from the lab.

“What the fuck is the Watchman thinking?” hissed Alim, as soon as Eyras was out of earshot. “How is agriculture going to work if the sky is black? And if the ground is too tainted, it can cause Amber Rage. It’ll be genocide anyway. Besides, no way is a corrupted Lusacan not going to go nuts and destroy everything.”

“Well, it is true that his family never ran an agricultural estate,” said the Architect. “Their money was in the gem trade. He was a second son and went into public service very early, as I did, but the Cult of Lusacan was responsible for the defense of Tevinter. The Appraiser or the Forgewright would have thought of domestic agriculture, but for him, it happens elsewhere and you buy up the finished product.”

“Or, he has been a Blighted creature for so long that he forgets that mortals need to eat. I do wonder; has he any interest in recruiting you to design his ‘special cities’?”

“I suppose it is a possibility. Of course, I would not. I am also a bit…rusty on such things, in any case.”

“It will take Eyras some time to get back to the Watchman,” said Zevran. “We first must send a runner to the Augur and letters to our…associates. They should know of this development, and they may be in danger. Du Loup in particular, for her research. If I were the Watchman, or Eyras for that matter, I would have agents within the Wardens, too. If they are already ‘immune,’ and being bound to the Watchman may give them the ability to sense darkspawn to some degree, it would not be hard for them to pose as Wardens. Thom Ranier did it, in the thirties, and he did not even have that much. He merely grew a beard and avoided others. We keep records better now, in part because of him, but it would still be more than possible. Or, real Wardens might be converted into the cult. I suspect they do have agents in the Wardens, and have for some time, since they knew enough to target my secretary and not just me.”

“The real question is whether any of our people are double agents,” said Alim. “Only recently have we shown any sign of real success. Three of our Warden agents were there, and they all went home at the same time—after we prevented initial infection in dragons with passive resistance, but weeks before we left. Of course, they would have told the others who knew about us; if, as Eyras implied, the Watchman can communicate via the binding to his people, distance would have been little issue, especially if Eyras was in Ferelden or southeast Orlais already. There is no way any of them could have told Eyras about fifteen of the seventeen being truly immunized, but even just workable passive immunization would have been news enough to warrant sending him here, if I were the Watchman. Especially if the informant doesn’t really know how resistance works, and just got the idea that ‘Hey, they made it so darkspawn can handle dragons without the dragons getting sick.’”

“It’s not Du Loup,” said Zevran. “She definitely would not be mixed up with a Tevinter supremacist cult. You remember when we interviewed her. I suppose it is possible she’s sleeping with a cultist and told them about us for some reason, but I doubt that. I also doubt that she’d leave anything written about us that a spy could steal. Our letters are encoded, and she is supposed to burn them after. Considering the risk to herself and the way she so carefully follows lab protocol, I doubt she disobeys.

“I don’t think Nesha or the other elf, Seryn, would be cultists either. That leaves the three human men. Hammett Collier would be most likely, as a character, and he was there at the experiment, but I would not make this judgment based on demographics alone.”

“If they can communicate via a blood binding, then the Watchman already knows what has occurred today, before Eyras has even left us,” said the Architect. “That is at least as important, if not more, than finding out which distant Warden may have betrayed us. Eyras may even now be receiving orders to murder us. We could easily defeat him in a fair fight, but if he simply collapses the tower with us in it…”

“You would just reincarnate,” said Zevran. “In fact, you would likely reincarnate into him. Eyras may be willing to give his life and will for the Watchman, but I hardly think he would wish to do so for you. Nor would the Watchman wish to sacrifice a loyal subordinate just to what? Inconvenience you for a few weeks? Since he thinks you are actually the one running the experiments here. Unless they find a way to bind you to your current body, I hardly think you have anything to fear from anyone who knows what you are.” And there was both threat and reassurance in those words, they all knew.

“We will warn Du Loup, the dwarf, and the officer. The rest need not concern themselves.”

“The other mage—he was there. He should be warned,” objected Alim.

“And Zevran identified him as the most likely collaborator.”

“No, I said he was the most statistically likely collaborator, but I would not actually make that assumption without further evidence.”

“Fine. Write him as well, but write the officer to keep an eye on him.”

“The officer has a name—Donnell Oftsmere. As does the dwarf; Nesha Cadash,” remarked Alim.

“I do not address the envelopes, and I have other matters to worry about.”

Which was true, the first part, because the Architect’s hand would have stuck out like a qunari in a dwarven quarter, in this place and time. Alim wrote anything that had to be seen by the eyes of others, because he had been taught the open, clerical hand used everywhere that was or had been under the purview of Orlais. But the rest…

“‘Other matters. I see,” said Zevran. ‘Sulking’ and ‘acting like a real magister when your entire estate is some lab animals and a dozen darkspawn’ were the first examples he thought of, but that came too close to a real fight, at a time like this. Zevran had always prioritized survival over honesty. “Such as finding a runner and sending him to the Augur, five minutes ago.”

“Zevran, go find a runner and send him to the Augur,” said the Architect.

“Oh for the love of Andraste’s dripping cunt, just go do it yourself! Or would you rather write letters?”

And there would come the force push. Zevran braced himself for it. But the Architect just swept out of the room in a great swirl of robes. Soon Zevran heard him shouting orders downstairs, muffled by a layer of stone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why doesn't Alim realize Eyras is Tainted? Yeah, I wondered too. I eventually decided it was a combination of alarm and too much "background radiation." Not only is everything in the Tower of Ishal (and all the ground in Ostagar) Tainted, but Alim hasn't seen a mortal person in like 15 years who wasn't a Warden. He's all but forgotten what it feels like, magically.
> 
> There is no evidence in the Dragon Age RPG of the Last Moon cult being quasi-Wardens. Rather, there is this item description from Inquisition: [Call of the Dark.](http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Call_of_the_Dark) Not many people ever see this item, because it requires "The Short List" perk, and it's only randomly sold even then (and very expensive, and requires level 17 to wield, and is probably surpassed by crafting by then, or you've gotten the Sulevin Blade).
> 
> For reference, I'll include the item description here: "Lusacan, the Dragon of Night, calls to you. He lives where it is darkest and waits for the day he will rise. Drink of his blood and know the power in darkness: either fear the Night or wield it."
> 
> Sounds a lot like the Joining.
> 
> Next chapter (or two or three) is porn!


	28. An Interlewd, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alim and Zevran go on a date, of sorts. Whatever will the Architect do, left behind?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which I almost get back to the intended aesthetic tone for this piece, for exactly one chapter. Well, maybe part of the next ^_^

The threat of the Watchman (and how many others?) hung over their heads, but the runners were sped and the letters sent, and so, while they waited, they had a few days to themselves.

It rained and rained; equinoctial autumn rains. The walls of the underground halls were slick, and they had buckets and spare beakers everywhere to catch the more obvious drips. Even aboveground, where seeping groundwater was not an issue, the ruined upper stories of the Tower of Ishal meant that the ground floor was too wet and slippery for training exercises, and everything outside was mud. Alim and Zevran finally had time to themselves.

They had tried, these last several months. Zevran’s _condition_ , when not masked by drugs that made the underlying nervous problem worse, meant that he had _needs_ , more frequently than the other darkspawn did. But they had been raising the childer, and performing experiments, and it seemed that somebody would always walk in at an awkward time. Zevran suspected that the Architect was sending people their way at intimate moments on purpose. Alim argued that he was just that uncaring and oblivious. In any case, between childer and experiments, even when they were largely undisturbed, there was not enough time for a proper fuck. If they had been mortals, yes, but darkspawn took hours, if not days, to finish. When it became unbearable, Zevran would have Alim shock six or eight climaxes out of him in quick succession, the magic making it take only an hour or two, and that would have to be enough.

Today, though, and for a couple more days until the runner returned, they had the world to themselves. They had already finished the analyses from the dragon trials, and they would not start a new series of experiments until they got word from everyone. Besides, Zevran had not yet seen the Temple of Urthemiel.

Evening had barely begun to fall, but the clouds were so dark that it did not matter, dark as the sky during a Blight. Alim and Zevran ran through the rain, squinting, feet slapping against the mud and wet grass, already-soaked trousers rolled up to their knees, and robes off. They had more clothing in their packs; leather packs, which should keep most of the damp out.

Zevran stopped and turned his face up to the sky, staring at a dim but daylit sky even as the rain fell into his eyes, marveling at finding that which had been lost. He opened his mouth to catch what drops of rain might fall into it, and darted out his tongue to lick up the rain running down his face.

“We should hunt,” he said, turning to Alim, who had stopped beside him.

“We should,” Alim agreed, grinning at Zevran with his mouth full of needle teeth.

They did not truly need to, right now. Both of them had a decent amount of reserves of blood and flesh in their stomachs. If the next few days went as they had planned, though, they would be glad of having eaten, and the eating would fire up their blood for what they would be doing. Two or three days at the Temple of Urthemiel. A tryst. Within half an hour, they had flushed out a deer from the underbrush, and they chased it, on, on, towards the Temple of Urthemiel.

Darkspawn can keep up with deer.

Eventually they saw the great dome, in glimpses through the forest that had grown up around it. Zevran signaled to Alim in question, who nodded. Alim tangled the deer’s feet in vines, and Zevran leapt, landing like a giant insect on the creature’s back, and bit, severing the spine.

Alim ran up to where the deer lay, still kicking at the vines with its front legs feebly, and began to tie it properly, with rope from his pack. Zevran hacked down a sapling with his hand axe, and they bound the injured deer to it, and carried it, walking now, into the Temple of Urthemiel.

Alim tried to open the doors as the Architect had, the last time he had been there—two force pushes to two levers. It did not work. He could hit one lever, but then the other force push would hit the door, or the wall. Pushing the levers one at a time did not work; they started to move back to their original position as soon as they were pushed, and if they did not reach their furthest extent at the same time, the door did not open.

“How about we each pull one lever?” asked Zevran, having watched Alim struggle for nearly five minutes.

“I don’t know if it will work without magic,” said Alim. “If it doesn’t work, I’m really sorry about bringing you all the way out here and then ruining it. This was supposed to be special. I fucked it up.”

“Sssh. Let us try this, before we cry defeat.” Zevran walked over to one lever, and took hold. “On your count of three.”

Alim grasped the other lever. “One, two, _three_ ,” he said, and pulled.

The heavy door swung open. Ahead stretched mosaic floor, the sight-line leading to the altar, all lit by the rainy evening sky…and, oh good, thank the Maker, the Architect _had_ cleaned up after the last time he and Alim had been there. That, or the roof simply leaked that much. (The skylight, the Architect had explained, had special barrier runes, so that objects and vapors could go out but not in.) Alim watched Zevran take in all of it, watched his face as he saw the intricate pictures in the floor tiles and the gilded, lewd carvings of Urthemiel. For all Zevran tried to be worldy, was worldy, he had almost a child’s fascination with pretty, shiny things, and the delight Alim saw now was more than worth the embarrassment with the door, or the chafing of the wet clothing still stuck to the both of them.

At last, Zevran turned back to him. “He fucked you here?” he asked.

Alim laughed. “Yes, he did. Under the image of his dead god. Probably a bit more sentimental than he’d admit he has in him, though quite the experience. I don’t recommend kneeling on mosaic tiles, though. The priests and acolytes used to live here, in the days of the Imperium, and there are still beds there. Mattresses, even, though most in pretty terrible condition.”

“It is a pity we have to ruin the mattresses,” said Zevran. “Scholars would love to study things like this, ancient mattresses included. Do they even know this place is here?”

“No, I don’t think they do, and they’re not going to know, if I can help it. This place is for us, and I won’t have mortals even in the general vicinity of here or Ostagar. Even if we weren’t using it, it wouldn’t be safe. Nor do Orlesian scholars want to work anywhere as uncomfortable as the southernmost end of Ferelden. But,” Alim continued, “we don’t have to ruin the mattresses. I brought a large oilcloth. All we have to do is rinse and sanitize it, and it’s good as new.”

“You think of everything,” said Zevran, laughing. Suddenly, his expression changed to one of alarm. “Oh no. We left the deer in the entryway.”

“Don’t you mean ‘Oh dear’?” asked Alim.

They took one look at the second set of spiral staircases, and decided it was not worth carrying an injured animal down the much narrower stairs. Instead, they ripped into it there in the sanctum. Moments blurred in the rush of feeding. Alim, licking blood off of Zevran’s fingers. Zevran holding a piece of meat in his teeth, and feeding it to Alim by kissing him. Alim cracking bones open with magic, and both of them licking the living marrow out with their wondrously long tongues, meeting in the middle of the hollow bone. Zevran insisting on sharing the tiny grayish brain, until Alim agreed and let him split it in two.

Eventually, they licked the last bits of blood off themselves and the deer’s skeleton.

“We should really find a mattress,” said Zevran, a bit out of breath.

Down the stairs and into the ancient dormitory. It was even more decrepit than when Alim had last seen it, years before, but towards the center of the room there was a bedframe and mattress that were fairly intact. A bit moldy, but they were darkspawn; it would not hurt them, and so the scent seemed not unpleasant but neutral. Having prodded it a bit to make sure it would not fall apart, Alim spread the oilcloth over the mattress, tucking it in securely, and then he and Zevran pulled each other on top of it.

“We are wearing too many pants,” gasped Zevran, after a few minutes of grinding and kissing. “Wet pants. They will chafe.”

“Right,” panted Alim, untangling his legs from Zevran’s and looking down at himself. The coarse pants they both wore were soaked with rainwater and splattered with blood. Alim could not feel the cold that a mortal would, but the stretch of wet, rough cloth across certain areas was unpleasant. They peeled off the wet clothing, twisting around to avoid having to get off the bed, and kicked it off their ankles.

Zevran rocked himself against Alim’s leg again, now with nothing between them. He licked from Alim’s throat down to his chest, tongue circling a dark grey nipple surrounded by light grey skin. His Grey Warden, now truly grey.

“Have I ever told you how lovely you are, especially now?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said Alim, arching his back and stretching his legs. “Maybe you can tell me again, and I’ll see if there’s anything new?”

Zevran licked several seconds longer, considering. “You have very smooth skin for a darkspawn,” he said at last. “Most of us are pitted, scarred—we get open sores very easily, the Taint fighting the mortal flesh of our bodies. I did, even, in those months I hid from you. But you’re the healer; you fix those even without thinking. You even heal those around you, without thinking, in little ways. The only marks on you are from blood magic. I love to lick those too; to feel the ridges under my tongue, and how they change sometimes and let me learn the shape of you anew.” He licked there, now, at Alim’s left wrist, and wrapped his tongue around like a bracelet and lapped at the sensitive palm.

“Tell me more,” begged Alim, writhing against Zevran’s thigh. This was why he had wanted Zevran alone. Perhaps it was selfish of him, but he had wanted to be adored as a man; not as a project, or a curiosity, or an elf, or a master of bedroom magic, or a pretty face, but as all those things, and as a person. It seemed the Architect could never fathom fucking a person without owning them—or maybe it was just with elves; who knew?—but Zevran gave freely and had always given, with no expectation but pleasure in return.

“More?” purred Zevran. “I love how you gasp when you take pleasure like this, even though we all know you need no extra air. I love how your ears are even more sensitive now”—he nipped at one, and Alim cried out—“and how you still wear my earring in them. I love how you bare your throat to me, even though we both know exactly how sharp my teeth are. I love how you cry out when you start to get close, even when you do so in my ear, because you simply cannot hold back unless there is something in your mouth. I love how the Taint makes you so much wetter now than you would be as a mortal, as you rub against me.”

Alim had sped up that rubbing, and his reply was only indistinct pleas and Zevran’s name.

“Are you going to come for me, Alim?” Zevran rolled a nipple between his thumb and forefinger until it had to hurt.

The first one was always easy. Alim bucked against Zevran’s thigh, now slick with his own fluids, and felt the tingling pleasure in his groin and the sharp pain in his nipple rise along his cock and break like a crashing wave over its head. He pressed his hips up once more and stayed there, limbs locked, as the sensation peaked and the space between them was suddenly drenched with ichor. Then he fell back on the bed, limbs loose, but yet unsated.

“Zevran,” he gasped, voice cracking with want. “Fuck me now.”

 

The Architect was having a great deal of difficulty focusing on his book. “A Magical History of Dragons, by First Mortalitasi Maximus Pentaghast” should have been fascinating—was fascinating—but he had read the same page six times without taking in any of it. Damn those elves! They had run off together, spurning him, and right now, while he was trying to do research, they were probably holed up in one of the ruins around here, writhing all over each other and licking various body parts with their uncannily long tongues…and that was not helping his distraction, in the least. He seized the tome before him and began reading with uncharacteristic deliberation.

“Tempestatibus 7:83, Valerianus “Draculis” Xenopater experimenta fecit, quae quantitatem sanguinis draconum per corporis pondum ut squamas in derme profanorum incipiet discernere, illud homini maiori masculo 7 potiunculae per 2 decalibras, aut quas rusticis dicitur “saxum pondo” aut “saxum”; feminae 8p/2dl. Non, autem, in hominem elvem hominemve minorem experimenta fecit, itaque si quantitates differeant aut quamquam different, nepossest dicere. Metamorphoses masculi, ad illam quantitatem superve illam, seqwntur: furor famesque libidoque magnior, intra horas parvas; squamae, circum os, cervicum, manum, pedes, pudendaque, intra dies 10-14; exacuendum oculis, odoratui, gustatui, celeritui, intra dies….”

It did nothing. Even the natural effects of high doses of dragon blood reminded him of what he was trying to avoid. “Greater libido” and “scales around the mouth and genitals,” indeed—not that scales held any unusual attraction, but mouths and genitals certainly did; and now he was thinking about mouths and genitals, and the restlessness he had been feeling since Spiders had told him that the two former elves had gone out together began to concentrate itself beneath the folds of the robe over his lap.

He still tried to ignore it. There was the ingrained habit of not giving into bodily needs, if one could avoid it. Alti controlled their bodies, not the other way around. There was also the fact that he was alone, and he did not fancy a multi-hour sexual endeavor with only his hand and, if he were desperate enough to commit such a shameful act, a dwarven stone dildo they had found in a thaig once. Though, knowing those libertine elves, they had probably taken it with them, in any case. He could, by rights, persuade one of the Awakened darkspawn to assist him—natural-born darkspawn were definitely capable of erection, penetration, and even reception—but he was quite sure all the ones in his compound knew nothing of sex, so that would surely result in a fumbling and unpleasant encounter. Certainly he did not want to risk having to force or trick one into his bed. He preferred his partners to have some idea of what was going on, and not to struggle.

And such considerations were quite the opposite of ‘ignoring it.’ Finally admitting defeat, the Architect reached down to rub himself just a bit through his robes, and bit his lip to keep from moaning at the long-awaited stimulation. He stroked himself a second time, and a third; then, he forced himself to stop. It would not do to perform such acts of self-pollution here and literally pollute the lab. He closed his book, and placed it on one of several stacks of books heaped on the center table, pulling an oilcloth back over it—because of the rain, they had taken all the books down from the wall-adjacent shelves and covered them like this, to keep the damp out. Thus he had turned up the dragon book; it had been sent to them in the first shipment of books from the Wardens, but until now he had been catching up on general magica of the last thirteen centuries.

Where to, now? It would be better to lie down for this. Upstairs was wet—really, all the floors were wet, and stone was uncomfortable besides—and downstairs was full of darkspawn. He could not let his inferiors see this base display. If nothing else, they might learn to pleasure themselves and become addicted to it, and then no one would get any work done. Then he remembered that closet where Alim always ‘treated’ Zevran for his nervous affliction—really, the man ought to have told him that Zevran had been _that_ kind of assassin. Even for elves, that was indecent—Alim marrying someone like that. He was a capable mage and researcher, but seriously lacking in common sense or self-respect.

As he had predicted, the dildo was gone. However, the room was relatively dry, and the makeshift cot seemed fairly clean, if rather too small. Barring the door, he pulled his robes up to his waist, and lay back on the cot with his feet hanging off the end.

At first he thought of the two elves, as his hand worked over his staff, of them doing various scandalous and athletic things to each other; of that time when he had had both of them, and they had both sucked him at once. He would truly never forget the sight of that pair of long, black tongues twisting around his length, or the feeling as they coiled and slid and wrapped around his testicles. Even though the Fade had been largely uninterested in or afraid of him for centuries, he had still had to check that no demon had caught him in its snare, at the time; it had been that good, that unreal. As he continued with that memory, though, the remembered events began to disgust him. He wanted Alim to himself, but the other elf was always there, always taking more of Alim’s affections. He had made allowances, for Zevran had been in Alim’s life before he himself was, and he understood duty. He had had a wife, before the tearing of the Veil, and children, and so had most of his lovers, after a certain point. He had performed the hidden rites of Urthemiel, at the appointed times. Such things were how things were. But the elf’s affections! What did such a brilliant mage want with a pox-ridden glorified whore? What, when he had a Dreamer of old on offer? A few tricks of a trained ass could hardly make up for the intellectual difference—Zevran was smart, for an elf, but he was not even a mage. Alim had seemed happy with the Architect for years; had it all been a lie?

And he had allowed that ungrateful elf to penetrate him. In the heat of lust and desperation, because it had been decades since he had lain with another, he had abased himself and admitted to wanting something so shameful. Not that the elf himself was any less of a pathic—elves mostly were—but he _knew_ , and he was probably laughing about it with the other elf. Because the world had been turned from the natural order of things, and elves had power above men even in the mortal world, and for that he himself now had even more to blame, for subordinating himself to an elf like that.

He would probably even do it again, someday. It was a vice, and like most vices, it was enjoyable. Some men gorged on delicacies, some were drunkards, some ate opium; and the Architect of the Works of Beauty liked throbbing cocks up his ass. If anything, the shame and the _wrong wrong wrong_ in his head made the pleasure sweeter. And that made him weaker, and the shame worse.

Right now, though, it was the wrong kind of shame, or maybe the right one, the kind that made his cock feel half-numb, and aroused anger instead of lust. Not shame that he had submitted, but to whom. Now he imagined himself punishing the elf, throwing him facedown over this cot, almost forcing him to submit to his shaft in turn, as elves should. Just Alim alone, as they had done before Zevran’s arrival; just pounding into the elf’s ass and feeling that ass and his magic wrap around him.

Mostly the magic. As a darkspawn, the only really attractive part of Alim was his magic. He had been quite striking as a young mortal, when they had first met, but age and then the Taint had stripped that all away. He was not exactly ugly, but physically all that had been improved was his tongue, and any darkspawn or ghoul had the same. If he had to choose between two visually mediocre elven ghouls, Zevran’s technique was better. It was the magic that made him worth having, in all the ways (sexual or otherwise) that mattered.

And the magic…if the Architect were being honest with himself, which he was not, the real draw of Alim’s magic was that it felt a lot like Corypheus’. That was what he really wanted: Corypheus’ big hands bruising his hips; Corypheus’ length splitting him open with barely enough grease to get it in; Corypheus’ voice mocking him for his softness and effeminacy as the taste of his cock filled his mouth. They had always quarreled and sabotaged each other, when they were not fucking, and it had ended in betrayal and being eaten alive, but he still ached for him. Unbidden, the image of Corypheus swam to the surface of his mind, and it was to the thought of Corypheus’ sneering lip that the Architect came all over his own hand, with a choked cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have gotten into the Architect's head, and he is the whiniest dudebro ever. Seriously. His problem is misogyny and transphobia, not strictly homophobia, though. According to Tevinter (based on the ancient Romans), taking the "passive" role is unmanly. The Architect cares about being proper, and thus hates himself immensely. Honestly, if he ever realized that he shouldn't be hating himself, he might have trouble enjoying sex at all. I do wish he'd had a chance to grow up somewhere with a less toxic society. He could be quite a nice person, if he hadn't bought into the thing about how Tevinter Values matter, or if he didn't automatically assume he was right all the time.
> 
> I've already established that Alim's magic is similar to Corypheus', especially where the Blight comes into it. Mages can sense each other's magic, kind of like synesthesia. Alim has a much greater sense of this than most--in fact, he can make predictions about children who haven't manifested yet, sometimes, or darkspawn childer--and the Architect has always been on the less sensitive side. Still, if someone's casting, they'll get a sense of magical signature, sort of like body language or voice. Alim started out as a "real" person (of sorts), and he has magic, and his magic feels like Corypheus', so that's why the Architect is attracted to him. He'd leave him for Corypheus in a hot minute, though.
> 
> Oh, and the Architect's fantasy is so freaking violent because he's trying to reaffirm his masculinity. It's not fucking working.


	29. An Interlewd, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More porn. The Architect makes a bad decision. Zevran actually talks about his feelings, for once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This works because no one involved is human. Also, good lord does the Architect have issues.

“I suppose it would be greedy to expect you to fuck me,” joked Zevran. “Time enough for it later, I guess. How much preparation do you want?”

“Just lick me open, then a couple fingers. But, I brought the dildo. If we do this right, I could fuck you with that while you fuck me.”

Zevran cursed, rolling his hips enthusiastically against the bed. The mere idea sent a wave of pleasure rolling down from his nipples through his vitals and to his cock. “Which pack is the dildo in?” he asked. “Yours?”

“Yes,” said Alim, leaning off the bed to fish around with one hand. He pulled the entire pack onto the bed. There, beneath spare robes and a few healing potions, was the stone dildo. He held it up with a noise of triumph.

“Perfect!” said Zevran. And then they ceased to talk, for Zevran had his tongue in Alim’s ass, and Alim was incapable of more than gasps for several minutes.

Zevran wondered just how much of his tongue he could get into a small space, and found that the answer was nearly all of it. One simply had to wiggle instead of push, always going forward with the tip. It was more difficult once he was past the bend in his tongue, where it started going down his throat normally instead of up into his mouth; it took real effort to extend it further than that. Still, he had something to prove, so he worked even that in. Alim’s insides tasted much like his skin, in the bits where it folded against itself—a bit musty, with the ever-present acid taste of the Taint.

Extracting his tongue was almost as difficult as getting it in. By the time he was halfway out, Alim was writhing so much that Zevran thought he might strain the muscle at its base, from being pulled around. But finally he worked even the tip out, still uninjured.

Alim forced himself to focus long enough to cast grease. “I’ve changed my mind. Don’t bother with fingers,” he told Zevran. “Just put it in.”

Zevran did. He had barely started to ease the head in before the tightness and all the earlier foreplay undid him—it was not like he had been trying to control it, since there was no such thing as a refractory period anymore. He arched his back and let the pleasure run through him, slipping out of Alim and splashing the last few jets of ichor over his ass and the bed. As he started to come down, still feeling the last traces of that orgasm in the tips of his fingers, he finally penetrated Alim properly.

There was plenty of grease, but they had rushed things; the stretch was overwhelming. Alim thought he would come again, but did not quite. Still, his cock jerked and dripped, and he gripped the bed tightly with both hands. Perhaps his claws would leave holes in the oilcloth, even though filed down; he did not care. All that mattered was the Zevran kept going, at that angle.

“Can you get the dildo?” panted Zevran, between thrusts.

“Huh? Oh. Yes.” It would probably mess up the angle, but he had offered. And where had it gotten to? Ah. There. “Hold this for a second,” he told Zevran.

Sitting up, left hand behind him for support—and yes, not quite so good an angle, but still pretty good—he reached around Zevran to the cleft of his ass, and began to work grease into the ring there, chasing it with a trickle of electricity. Zevran’s rhythm stuttered as he exhaled sharply, then evened out again. Soon, Alim managed to slip a knuckle and a half just inside, not really past the strongest muscle. That would probably be enough. He could happily finger Zevran all night, but this was not the position for it. He wiped off the last of the grease on Zevran’s back.

“Dildo time,” said Alim, leaning back enough to be able to actually breathe. Zevran pulled it out of his mouth—he had put it there, while Alim had been looking elsewhere—and handed it to him.

“Zev! Do you even know where that thing’s been? I don’t remember if I washed it, the last time.”

“Considering I had my entire tongue in your ass a few moments ago, I hardly think it matters where a dildo has been. You know we don’t shit, either, unless I’ve been doing something wrong and you haven’t told me.”

“Yes, but it’s the principle of the thing.”

“Just put it inside me, please, before the stone drops below my body temperature again.” The one place darkspawn could feel temperature was inside their anuses. Alim and Zevran both liked to make full use of this.

Alim worked the flared head of the stone dildo into Zevran’s ass, then rammed home the narrower body of the shaft. Zevran stopped thrusting altogether for a few breaths as he rode out the overwhelming sensation. No matter how many times he did this, and that had to be a couple tens of thousands of times over the years (he had done the math, once, for laughs), the initial penetration was always intense. The burn and the unyielding hardness of the stone, still colder than flesh would have been, put him at the verge of orgasm in his core, and yet his cock felt as if it had not quite caught up with the rest of him yet.

Instead, he cried out sharply, as he began moving again, shoving his cock into tight, greased flesh. Alim drowned him out. Could they be heard aboveground? Perhaps some Chasind or hunter would spread tales that this ruined temple was haunted. Probably just as well, if they did. Accurate, even; the both of them were ghosts to the world, dead but alive, and haunting the ruins of the Imperium by…fucking. If Zevran had had the breath for it, as he slammed in and out of Alim’s ass, he would have laughed. Instead, his next grunt was simply a little more forceful than the rest. That was something that did not often come up in ghost stories—ghosts having sex. There were stories of people who fucked demons, and women who were impregnated by desire demons (and Zevran could believe that, except for the half-demon baby part, having seen desire demons with his own eyes), but never sex ghosts. This sounded odd, because who would not want to be a sex ghost? A spirit or two who just got railed, perpetually. If he were a ghost, he probably would not even get tired of it. Chafing or getting hungry or thirsty would be impossible.

And then Alim began vibrating the dildo inside him, and he lost all capability for coherent thought.

The stone did not have enough metal for Alim to electrify it. He had tried that, months ago, while helping Zevran, and it had not worked. Unwilling to waste his allies’ resources or squander their goodwill by requesting they send him a metal dildo, he had instead made do with magical vibration, which was a little less fun than an electrified dildo but worked almost as well. It was a tiny, controlled earthquake spell. It had required some thinking to scale it down, and control to maintain it, but a healer’s magic was nothing if not controlled. The real difficulty was getting the frequency and amplitude of the vibrations so that they stimulated without blurring into each other or causing the flesh to go numb.

This way, he could just hold the base of the dildo inside Zevran instead of thrusting it in and out. And if he angled his hand like so…yes, he could keep up the vibration spell and simultaneously press sparks into Zevran’s taint.[i]

Zevran moaned long and fluidly as the pleasure rolled through his cock and he spilled inside Alim, shuddering as the vibration and electricity forced it to keep going, spasm after spasm. It felt as if all the fluid in him would be drained out at once, through his cock. Eventually it died down to aftershocks, and he leaned forward onto Alim’s shoulder, wordless, mouth dry.

Alim flipped him onto his back and began riding him, close enough to his own peak that stopping now would have ruined it. He switched hands and started the vibration and electricity again (this time the latter was on Zevran’s ballsack), and Zevran wailed as the renewed triple stimulation forced his waning orgasm back to full strength again. Alim’s eyebrows raised as he felt more fluid shoot out inside him, and soon after he leaned forward, mouth falling open, and came like an aqueduct, the first black spurt catching Zevran on the chin.

Alim stopped the magic, too overcome to keep it going safely, especially with two spells at once. Zevran finally stopped coming and lay flat on his back, feeling as though made of pudding, staring at the dust motes floating between him and the ancient ceiling until enough of his brain came back that he could form words again.

“Water?” he asked, a bit faintly.

“Did I have the electricity a bit much?”

Zevran made a nonspecific noise signifying the sexually ineffable.

“I’ll take that as a yes, then.” Alim eased himself off Zevran’s cock and went looking for the waterskin.

Zevran tried to say “No, that was amazing.” Alim looked at him, with one hairless eyebrow raised nearly to the top of his head, and muttered something about “definitely too much electricity.”

Rubbish. He was perfectly fine. He was quite ready to get up, have a pint of water to replenish himself, and bend himself over the edge of the bed so Alim could have a turn at fucking for once. Just as soon as he could find where he had left his…everything, really. What were arms.

 

It had come to this. The Black City and the plague therein had visited many indignities on him in the last thirteen centuries, but this was a new low. Never before had the Architect had to resort to sticking his genitals in a titration flask.

Well, technically a burette. It was still used for titration, and it was a type of lab glassware, ergo “titration flask.” He had not been planning on selecting that one; he had been looking for a beaker. He had remembered a rumor from his days in school, that one could put a greased sea sponge in a drinking glass of sufficient size and that this would simulate intercourse with a woman. He had never actually tried it, because, while he was not averse to lying with them, he had never very much fancied women. It had not occurred to him that a greased sea sponge in a slightly tighter drinking glass could simulate the inside of an ass equally well, until he was well past old enough to be able to find an actual person or elf pretty much whenever he wanted.

At least, until today. He had tried to avoid resorting to such juvenile improvisations, but at last his hands had cramped up beyond all continuing, and his yard was still stiff and furious with its incomplete satisfaction.[ii] And then he had seen the unused burette, and realized that the glass tube was almost exactly the same diameter as his penis.

If this proved usable, it would obviate the need to find a sea sponge. They had some, in the lab, but the Architect was not entirely sure where, and, if he had to search for one, his arousal could not bear the possibility of further denial. He carried the flask back to the closet, and cast grease into it, before cautiously slipping his member inside.

The fit was tight, and tightened further as his penis responded to the resumption of stimulation, but not so tight as to be uncomfortable or painful. Indeed, aided by the smooth surface and the grease, he discovered he was able to move the flask quite fast. The grip needed was little different than that required for masturbation with one’s hands alone, but at least he could keep his fingers in one place and simply move the tube.

The strangest part was that, while the tube stimulated his shaft quite nicely, its inflexible walls barely touched the glans. A real anus or mouth or sheath was soft, and collapsed into the smallest diameter when not occupied, opening to an intrusion only as that intrusion touched it. A glass tube was always open to its largest extent. His own _membrum virilis_ was of the sort that is widest at the base and tapers towards the tip; indeed, the head of it was almost the narrowest part, though hardly thin on its own. The Blight had enlarged it, somewhat, but the basic shape had always been the same. And so the greased glass barely skimmed the flared edge of the corona. Always, each thrust left something to be desired. The Architect was now regretting not having the patience to find a sea sponge.

The only thing that would be more humiliating than having to fuck a titration flask, however,  would be unsuccessfully fucking a titration flask. Concentrating on how shameful it would be to fail in his manhood with even so much as a piece of laboratory glassware—for that was the sort of derision that had never yet failed to kindle heat in his loins—he sped up his motion with the cylinder yet again, biting his lip as he did so, and finally forced himself over the edge of an almost painful and relatively unsatisfying climax.

When a large volume of fluid enters a small space, several things happen. Some of these things were slightly mitigated by the fact that burettes have a hole in the end—in this case, the valve was open to approximately the size of a medium injection needle. About half of the ichor shot out through this hole with great velocity, spraying the wall as if he had taken a syringe and gesticulated wildly while rapidly depressing the plunger. The principle was extremely similar. Since the “plunger” did not have a Rivain-gum seal at its terminus, the rest of the ichor was forced back up the tube and along his penis, coating the whole of it and depositing several tablespoons on his stomach and testes (not to mention the cot he was sitting on).

The pressure of the fluid was so great as to be somewhat painful, and, cursing himself for an idiot, the Architect yanked the tube off his member. He neglected to consider the appropriate angle for this maneuver. A truly inhuman squeak escaped his larynx, and he curled up on the cot, casting the one healing spell he knew at his groin. He had just the presence of mind to put the burette down on the cot as well, gently, instead of throwing it at the wall.

Immortal gods. That was one way of getting rid of an erection.

 

“It was not the electricity’s fault,” insisted Zevran, after Alim had poured a pint of water directly into his mouth. “Anyone would be so incapacitated after coming for ten or fifteen minutes at once.”

“You mean that wasn’t just twice, close together?”

“Not really. I must say, I have not had one that good in decades.”

“Decades. Huh. You worried me for a bit, though.”

“I think, had I still been mortal, I would have blacked out. It is simply very hard to render a darkspawn unconscious.”

“Ready to go again? Possibly with less intensity,” asked Alim, gesturing at Zevran’s cock, which was still at more than half mast.

“Oh, definitely. Your turn on top, this time.”

Zevran bent himself over the edge of the bed, ignoring the tough straw poking him through the oilcloth. It had not torn, yet, so probably neither would his skin. More grease, and then Alim shoved into him in one stroke—as easily as if his cock had been one finger, after that hard, vibrating dildo. It felt good, but again, little more than a finger would have.

“Harder,” Zevran asked. Alim thrust a bit more, obligingly. It was still not enough, and he repeated himself.

“That’s as fast as I can stand to go,” admitted Alim.

“Harder really means ‘more sexual stimulation in general.’ If pressure were the only defining factor in good sex, everyone would be so many pancakes.” Zevran paused. “Actually, I knew a gentleman once who was into that. The idea of flattening people. He was not a target, so I declined a second assignation. I was rather turned off by the way he kept talking about squishing me.”

“I can see that. He must have been a foolish man, and not just for not realizing he was disconcerting you. I, for one, would not flatten this”—Alim reached around to grasp Zevran’s cock—“or this,” he said, giving his ass a resounding slap.

“Brasca! That’s more like it. Keep doing that.” The sound of slaps and Zevran’s cries of pleasure resounded off the stone walls for several minutes.

“Are you close?” asked Alim, after a time. “My hand hurts.”

“Almost. I need more.”

Alim sank his needle teeth into Zevran’s shoulder, as he ran electricity through the both of them.

They came together, Zevran screaming and Alim muffling his pleasure in a mouthful of blood. As Alim detached himself, black ichor dripped from the oilcloth and from Zevran’s ass, as black blood dripped from his shoulder and Alim’s mouth.

Then, flipping Zevran over on his back, Alim sank to his knees and licked Zevran’s cock into his blood-smeared mouth, and they began again.

 

Alim had kept count of the days. The runners would be back in hours; soon they would have to return as well. And then it would probably be off to the Augur’s complex, if this went as such things usually did.

When he mentioned this to Zevran, the latter squirmed slightly and asked, “Please don’t talk about that in bed.”

“I admit broodmothers are not what most people want to talk about in bed, but…Oh. Is this something like…? You know, that one time at Skyhold when you wrote…?”

Zevran, who was usually ashamed of next to nothing, had turned his face away and was covering it with his hands. “Sort of. It is not what I want to be thinking about with you, right now.”

“It’s a bit odd, I’ll grant that, but I could probably do a decent roleplay with vine spells, sometime.”

“No, it’s….” How could one explain that simultaneous wish to be and yet not be a thing; that awareness of liminality he had always walked in, as an elven man and…whatever the Crows had made of him? To be a man, and yet in some ways not, especially where humans were concerned. Alim had never seemed to have this problem, in how he saw himself, but he had been raised in a Circle tower, not in a city. (Though, Zevran had never really been close to any other elf who had been raised in a city, not nearly so close as he was to Alim.) Yet now, he tried.

“You could be in-between like that if you wanted,” said Alim, after a long pause. “Save for what the Architect would do, I guess. Honestly, he’d just say something nasty about elven faggots and sweep out of the room dramatically. He probably already considers both of us that. But I remember, before Weisshaupt. You used to have dresses, for when you wanted to be pretty, you said. I never would—I never _have_ loved you any less.”

“But what I have never been able to explain to myself is, why are there Broodmothers and being one mixed into all of this? Why does my mind do this?”

“I really don’t know. Minds are senseless that way. Except, well, broodmothers and ghouls are the only type of female darkspawn, and you only really hear about the first. Certainly broodmothers make a stronger impression. And, you’re a darkspawn now. It’s probably natural.”

“Doesn’t explain that horrible broadsheet all those years ago.”

“You’d seen a broodmother before, and we were researching the Blight. You know how you get about sex and danger. Or maybe it’s the tentacles.”

“I suppose.” Zevran looked thoughtful. “The real question is, where can a darkspawn get a proper dress around here?” A wistful smile crossed his face. “I couldn’t wear them, once we were at Weisshaupt, you know. Not even in the town, once our plans began. I was already an elf, and did not want to make them consider me any less.”

“I know. Sometimes, I’d see you open your closet to get dressed, and you’d run your fingers over the cloth, and then let it go and pull out your uniform instead.”

“And even after you…left. Not even to remember.” Zevran was crying, without tears, as darkspawn do, just great cracking sobs and utterly dry eyes.

“You have me now. You have me now, and you always will. Our eternity, and we can make it whatever we wish. When this business with the Archdemons is over, we’ll leave the Architect and I’ll get you a dress.”

“It’s too late. I haven’t been pretty in years. I’m a darkspawn; I’d look ridiculous.”

“Zevran, you will never not be pretty to me.” And for one last time, though they were both nearly spent, he drew Zevran to him and kissed him, slowly with his teeth kept behind his lips, and snaked one hand down between them, between Zevran’s legs.

 

When they returned to Ostagar, perhaps a few hours later than planned, they discovered that their storage closet and all the lab glassware had been cleaned until it shone, and that half the different types of flasks had been mixed up. The Architect declined to comment. And within hours after that, none of them had time to speculate on what might have occurred, during that ironically rainy calm before the storm, because their runners began to return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [i] The whole Taint/taint thing: Bioware, how’d you just let that be named after part of the genitals? I could understand straight people doing it, but some of your writers are gay. I mean, is it some sort of trend? “This is my new fantasy plague, it’s named ‘cockhead.’”
> 
> [ii] “My penis is angry, for it rose to the sky/ready and wild, for she chose the wrong guy./Deprived of my earnings, I continue my yearning,/from the friendzone, where I do not belong.” Anonymous satiric poetry from tumblr, and that’s literally the Architect and his dick right now.
> 
> Me @ the Architect: Dude, you should have thought before you stuck your dick in that. What happened was entirely predictable. That's why you don't think with your boner. (I was at the Rhapsody Discord party last Saturday, and everyone was like "Architect no.")
> 
> Zevran's gender issues: I'm not a well-known enough author to get any shit, at the moment, probably, but I can foresee people getting upset about various little things. I would like to state that I am trans, though not a trans woman or similar, and I have done most of the things I've written Zevran as doing, just "from the other way around." And the broodmother thing...Zevran is a very sexual character, and his sexuality is very much mixed into how he perceives his gender. A lot of transphobes are like "if you seeing yourself as (gender) is in any way sexual, you're not really trans." This is false. A lot of cis women and trans men would also fit the criteria for autogynephilia, for example. The way gender is culturally tied to genital sex and sexual roles, it's all going to play a part in one's experience of gender. (And yes, Zevran is still using "he." If he were in our world, at the time in which I'm writing this, he'd probably call himself genderfluid. As it is, he does consider himself a man, just a very queer one. There are trans people in Thedas, and in this timeline, Zevran did even meet Krem, but he's never considered himself as trying to "cross" or "become" anything, just...liminal, or effeminate. I believe that would be within the realm of queer masculinity for where he is, not an "other gender" area like it would likely be for my time and place.) Anyway, I've implied Zevran's gender issues for a while now, and not just in this fic, so I figured I'd just go ahead and make it canon.


	30. Three Align

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Watchman is not working alone, and both he and his allies are quite formidable. A lecture on the nature of spirits and demons, and on applied summoning of minor demons--there are things the Architect is competent at, as one might expect from a man who was a high priest once. An unexpected ally turns up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posted on Wednesday 7/5 because the 4th was a holiday.

“She has been contacted by the Forgewright and the Appraiser?”

“Yes,” said the hurlock, cowering before the Architect. “She made me say it back to her.”

“Are there any whispers of strange or unusual darkspawn around the compound? Odd spots in the Song? What about mortals or Wardens?”

“N-no. I heard nothing but what she told me. I was not there long.”

“That doesn’t preclude that they sent messengers, like Eyras, or like our own runners,” interjected Alim. “Her compound is fairly easy to access through the Deep Roads. We are much more out of the way, by that route, than she is, but better connected on the surface, via the old Imperial Highway.”

“What else did she say?” asked the Architect, ignoring Alim.

“I do not know what it means. ‘Six must fall, seven rise, three align to bring night. Wish to undo our research strides. One unknown hides. Come to my side.’”

“That is terrible poetry. And in Trade too,” said the Architect. The runners’ main language was ancient Tevene; so too did the two magisters usually speak to each other, and to Alim and Zevran. As, in fact, the Architect continued now. “‘Six’ probably means Razi—”

“It’s encoded so the runner won’t understand the message,” interrupted Zevran. “It’s fairly obvious what she means. If the runner knows, too many darkspawn will end up knowing, and then there will be no hiding anything from her…visitors.”

“Go to the common room,” the Architect said to the runner. “We will call you back if we need more details from you.”

“Yes, six means Razikale,” said Alim, when the three of them were alone. “Seven is Lusacan. ‘Three aligned’—we already know the Forgewright and the Appraiser contacted her, since those names would have little meaning to ordinary darkspawn; that makes two, so three would be the Watchman, since they’re ‘aligned to bring night.’ The ‘one’—all the rest of the Seven are accounted for, now, except the Madman, unless Corypheus somehow reappeared, and I doubt he’d be simply “hiding.” He would have made a move, years ago, if he could. So it’s the Madman, probably. Anyway, she wants us to meet her in person, and she’ll clarify there.”

“What can you tell us about the Forgewright, the Appraiser, and the Watchman, particularly their powers?” asked Zevran.

“I know what they were willing to reveal, several hundred years ago. Our powers have probably all grown since then,” began the Architect.

“The Forgewright is primarily an elementalist. His family was Laetan, but he showed great magical ability and rose through the ranks of the cult of Toth. If Urthemiel builds, or Lusacan wages war, or Andoral needs chains, Toth provides the materials. He was quite innovative, and did so mostly without simply claiming the achievements of the dwarves. As for his Blight powers, he passes on his craftsman ability to darkspawn whom he is near. We noticed, only a couple centuries in, that just his presence, without direction, resulted in finer work from those Corypheus and the Appraiser controlled. It is not very flashy, unlike his renowned (or formerly renowned) elemental tricks, but do not underestimate it. If he is working with the others, their forces will be better equipped than ours.”

“The cult of Andoral regulated the slave trade, and magically focused on all forms of control—of the individual and the population. They produced numerous monographs on slave management and labor efficiency and so on. The Appraiser, last I saw, has some ability to force others to do her will. Not as you do, Alim; you persuade them, while he simply controls their bodies. It might be interesting to see which of your powers would prevail. They will have an easier time gathering a force, with him, and synchronizing the execution of orders. As for her own magic, I have seen a bit of entropy and primal, but mostly bloodwork.”

“The Cult of Lusacan ran the defense of Tevinter. The Watchman was an accomplished general. He knows some form of the spell which you call ‘mana clash,’ so you should know to defend yourself from it, and he has at least as much military experience as either of you. He can make Blighted creatures entirely unable to approach him or a chosen place or thing—not hiding it, but making it utterly repellant to them. This may be able to be conquered, but I never had the need or time to learn. I am…less affected than others by it, but even so it would be nearly impossible for me to lay a hand or spell on him, if he were determined.”

“Great,” said Alim. “We’re fucked.”

“The question is,” said Zevran, who was perched on a table and picking his teeth with one of his claws, “how did they get our information? There is still the possibility of a Warden double agent to consider, but how did they find the Augur? We told them nothing about her. Either she opened communications herself, and did not tell us—perhaps she thought they might become allies—or our scouts have been spied upon. Perhaps they were questioned by Eyras, here in Ostagar, in which case I doubt we can really blame them. Or even abducted and subjected to blood magic—I believe blood magic can be used for intelligence extraction and memory modification, yes?”

“Yes,” said the Architect. “I am not an expert in such, but it was common. The Appraiser and the Watchman would both have such skills, like as not. I have never seen them use those spells, but the knowledge was not uncommon.”

“Don’t look at me. I don’t know how that part of it works,” said Alim. “I mostly focused on the destructive and medical applications. I could hijack an ogre, but it would be little better afterwards than a Tranquil with a head injury.”

“You can’t just summon any old demon and get good results, with blood control. Even I know that much.”

“I wasn’t summoning anything. I try not to do suicide attacks.”

“That is not—never mind. We can discuss this on the road. Pack your things, the both of you.”

 

Thirteen hours later, they descended beneath the lowest floor of the Tower of Ishal, and Alim stopped counting time by the sun and started counting by measures of dragonsong. Everything sensitive had been packed, in knapsacks or handcarts; they left behind only a skeleton force, led by Felix, to feed the remaining lab animals and tend the gardens.  Zevran had supervised the construction of several kinds of hand-bombs, to make up for the lack of magical defense.  They did not know when next they would be back.

If the Watchman or others had been abducting their runners—they must consider that possibility, however slight—safety was most likely in numbers. Everyone who truly knew anything would go with them, save Felix, who was in charge of those left behind. The Architect had wanted to leave Spiders, since Felix had no magic, but Alim and Zevran both reminded him how Spiders had gotten his name in the first place. So they had Frigor, the three grown childer, plus several runners. With such numbers, they could even take some of the books along.

“Summoning demons is not a suicide attack, if you do it properly,” said the Architect, breaking the silence, as soon as they got to the causeway proper. It seemed he had not forgotten the aborted conversation earlier.

“It’s a capital offense, south of Tevinter,” replied Alim. “Even today, when mages have a large degree of legal freedom. Technically, it’s a capital offense even in Tevinter, but I have heard that it is not enforced unless one has influential enemies, or causes a lot of public destruction and havoc. When I was a young man, all mages were locked up in towers, and even the suspicion of demons or simple blood magic was deadly.”

“I see. I thought you were talking about demonic possession.”

“Well, no one south of Tevinter really knows how to summon demons ‘safely,’ anymore, legal consequences aside. It’s a lost art. There are reams of paper devoted to whether it’s possible at all.”

The Architect was silent for several moments, perhaps arranging what he was going to say. “Spirits, demons—they are much the same, in essence. The latter is a hostile or broken form of the former. _Daimones_ —that is the word for all of them. If I may draw your attention to the words _kalodaimon_ or _kakodaimon_ , the common Tevene words for your ‘spirit’ and ‘demon’” (the Architect hesitated a bit over the switch in languages), “which reflect this concept. It is rare to be able to bind a spirit without breaking it, or even to pull it across the veil without breaking it, but some have the gift to do so. Mediums and seers can often coax an unbroken spirit to aid them in their greater works.”

“I know that. I was a spirit healer. You basically just quoted Midromel. Or, he quoted whatever you’re quoting, because I seem to recall that you precede him by several centuries. Of course, neither sort of denizen of the Fade seems to care much for Blighted creatures. Probably it makes them ill.”

“I was just making sure. You never know, with mages these days.”

Alim muttered something extremely sarcastic about “mages these days,” which none of the others quite caught.

“If you are quite finished,” continued the Architect, looking pointedly at Alim, “the way to handle demons is by properly controlled summoning rituals. One must make sure the wards and bindings are correct, warding one’s self as well as binding the demon. These are what are called the metasubstantial components: the base spells and any material constructs. _Baculum magici_ is often used for temporary installations, or for temporary additions to an existing permanent component; lead-lyrium alloy, sometimes mixed or tempered with blood, is used for permanent sites or more dangerous summons. Lyrium-copper or lyrium-silver is good for applications where electricity magic will be used, or, especially the latter, for its value, as is lyrium-gold or lyrium-electrum. The Archon at least used to have a summoning room with lyrium-platinum circles. It was illegal for any other to use that alloy, for staves or circles. The Cult of Toth was lobbying to have that overturned, even before we tried to pierce the veil. I had the good fortune on a few occasions to participate in workings with the Archon in his summoning room, and having used a platinum circle, I must say that its power, precision, and smoothness are incomparable. Lyrium-steel is good for demons of unusual strength, or for workings with enormous amounts of power. Encased in glass, it is suitable for rites involving high heat.”

Alim nodded; such things were largely familiar, or at least intuitable, from glyphwork, although modern mages rarely performed workings complex enough for more than crayon-du-chant. Even lead-lyrium spell arrays were usually found only in colleges and military facilities. A few of the other emissaries started to ask questions about what “alloys” or “lyrium” or “metasa-whatsits” were, but the Architect waved them off and promised that they would get an explanation later. Alim got the premonition that he, not the Architect, would be doing most of that explaining.

“Then, there are the insubstantial components. This is your will, the demon’s will, and any dialogue and particularly promises that occur between you and any spirit or demon. The proper bindings and wards can prevent the demon from exerting very much of its will, but stronger demons have been known to convince people to accept possession, even so bound. It is generally a very good idea to offer the demon something that seems at least almost as good a reward as possessing you. To outdemon the demon, as the saying goes. Typical offerings are a slave with low magical ability, or an object which one convinces the demon is worth possessing, by some artifice. Weaker demons, under proper binding and warding, may simply be forced to one’s will. It is a good idea for one to be supervised in this, the first several times. But, even if one does become possessed, it is often possible to bind your possessed body—for it is material, and thus can be restrained by both ordinary and metasubstantial bonds, and demons often do not realize this until it is too late—and for other mages to find you in the Fade and disentangle the demon from you. Due to the high cost of lyrium, though, this is rarely done, unless one is an altus or otherwise a mage of rare talent or great repute.”

“Some things don’t change much,” said Alim.

“In any case, knowing these safeguards, minor demons were often bound to objects for industrial purposes, and more. Imagine a rune or glowstone, but one with some limited intelligence, so it might light up a room or heat water at certain times of day, without a separate timer mechanism that might fail, or without needing to be set each time. Or imagine levering a giant stone into place in the walls of a building. Force magic, but few mages have the strength, precision, and stamina all combined to do this. Many mages working together is a resource drain, and ups the potential for accidents by mistiming. Bind a demon to the stone, or more usually to a tool attached to the stone, and it can be commanded precisely to the thirty-second part of an inch. Or, too, bind a demon to an ordinary object to curse it, and then slip it into the possession of a political rival, to dispose him to excesses of rage or lust, or some other vice or injury. Et cetera. Minor demons can be called upon, thus, when bound, to enhance the strength and precision of any ordinary working, as spirit healers even in your time ally with spirits. Major demons cause trouble, and I suppose an inexperienced summoner with no safeguards would be more likely to attract them when casting about at random, but with skill and care they can be handled.”

“Were you planning on using demons to save Razikale? I know they’re less interested in us, now, but it’s hardly impossible to get their attention. Corypheus used Nightmare, and I personally experienced the effects of that.”

“I have not decided. Certainly not if I do not have to. As you have said, attracting them is difficult for us, and obtaining the proper setup would be difficult, in that situation. If you are unable to control that many darkspawn, or if Razikale awakes before we finish our task, or if these…others decide to interfere, I may have to. The hard part is finding a demon willing to work with the Taint; again, most of them do not. Possibly even broken spirits fear further corruption.”

“Wardens occasionally summon them. I have not, myself, but there are definitely recorded incidents.” Some of which had only been recorded in the time-distortion of a tattered patch of the Veil, but recorded all the same.

“Wardens have very low amounts of the Taint in them, until the very end. I doubt most _daimones_ could detect it. Ourselves, on the other hand…even the _daimones_ avoided the Black City. They pleaded with us not to enter. We thought they feared what we invaders would do. We were wrong. They feared for us. I believe, since no man knew of the Blight before we did, that they can be infected as well.”

Alim had no reply to this, for of course he had never been nearer to the Black City than any mage born in his century. Of his own much less ambitious excursion beyond the Veil, he revealed nothing. The party walked on in relative silence for several minutes, to the beat of the dragonsong, and then they had to stop and carry the handcarts over a rockfall.

 

To Alim’s senses, the air around the Augur all but thrummed with magic and racing thoughts. Awakened hurlocks scurried around her by the dozen, but the moment the Architect’s party entered, the Augur sent all her darkspawn out.

“Pardon me for skipping all the formal greetings,” began the Architect. “How did the Watchman and the rest find you?”

“I would prefer all but you and the two elves be out of the room, before I answer that,” replied the Augur.

“Fine. Leave us,” he said to the Disciples. “Ask one of the door guards to take you to ‘the old lab.’ They will know what that means.”

There was a long silence, as the darkspawn walked back across the length of the great cavern and out the door. It thudded shut behind them, and then at last the Augur spoke.

“The Last Moon got word that strange deliveries were being made to Old Lothering, which was supposed to have been destroyed. They do have contacts in the Wardens, whose identities the messenger would not reveal, and those confirmed that the deliveries and any activities at Ostagar were not official Warden business, beyond a short-term soil assay a few years ago. They followed our runners.”

“Any evidence of mental tampering?” asked the Architect.

“No. Just a tracing spell. Their messenger scattered sharp debris so one of our runners would cut his foot, thus providing just enough blood for the trace. It was unlikely that he would be aware of anything other than having cut his foot, and may have forgotten the incident.”

“How long ago?” asked Zevran.

“Over a year. At least, over a year since they began to investigate.”

“So that still does not answer why Eyras knew about the experiments, so soon. We may still have a mole, somewhere.”

“Next question,” said Alim. “Where are they?”

“The messenger did not reveal it. In fact, he was magically bound not to.”

“I suppose it’s possible it’s the South Korcari complex. Their metalwork is pretty good. But, I felt no sign of either an Original Darkspawn being there, any of the times I was there, or of the sort of magic that would cover one up, though I admit I wasn’t looking. And you guys trade there as well. If the Forgewright is down there, he’s singularly stupid.”

“Their work is good, but the Forgewright is not involved,” confirmed the Architect. “I have seen what darkspawn can do with the Forgewright present. South Korcari work is good, but the hivemind level is more than accounted for by the number of broodmothers present.”

“The Deep Roads don’t go much further south than that. That leaves the North.” Alim thought for a few moments. “What do you bet that the Watchman, at least, is somewhere near the part of the Deep Roads under Minrathous?”

“That or the west Anderfels,” said the Augur. “I detect no unusual activity there, in fact almost no activity, but there are ways to hide that. There are likely ways to hide the magical signature for that. I suspect red lyrium runes would be the way such a thing is done. Red lyrium would be good for Blight magic, and the Forgewright has the knowledge to invent such a thing. He was working in a similar direction with unblighted lyrium, several centuries ago. If they have a genlock broodmother available, finding darkspawn capable of lyrium crafting would be no problem.”

“Or if they know how to make darkspawn Tranquil,” said Alim.

“Tranquil?” asked the Architect and the Augur, speaking at the same time.

“It’s a horrific practice formerly used by the Southern Chantry. You don’t want to know.”

“Why is it relevant to lyrium crafting?” asked the Architect.

“It increases resistance to lyrium and magic, though at an unconscionable cost,” answered Zevran, when Alim did not. “If they know of it, though—I do not think your former associates would be unwilling to commit atrocities, no?”

“Few things against common darkspawn are atrocities, in any case,” said the Architect. Alim and Zevran exchanged pointed looks.

“So they’re probably under Minrathous and the western Anderfels. Probably all three of them are together, because it is much easier to hide one complex than three. They are using The Last Moon and some Wardens as contacts and messengers—was the messenger sent to you Last Moon?”

“Yes.”

“—and, then, they probably don’t have anything comparable to the Awakening, or they would use that, rather than trust so many mortals. Though, I wonder how many Last Moon members are fully turned ghouls, now. Also, how many normal darkspawn they have.”

“You want information? I’ll tell you,” cut in a new voice.

Zevran’s hands went to his daggers. Alim cast a barrier; the Architect began what Alim recognized as a paralysis glyph, but did not fully cast it. The ceiling was suddenly filled with floating ice—the Augur’s casting, apparently. He still saw no other than the four of them who were supposed to be there, even with his deepest scrying. Where had that voice come from?

Then, where all his senses had said was absolutely nothing but air, a split second before, a being popped into existence. A gaunt figure, covered head to toe in spell-shimmering Blight armor.

“You want them to leave you alone? I want to destroy them,” said that shrill voice again, ringing off the walls of the cavern. “I’ll tell you everything I know about them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Ominous cliffhanger music*
> 
> (I'll add actual commentary later.)


	31. The Hidden One Revealed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mysterious intruder is unmasked. News of the opposition from an unlikely ally. Razikale's peril has become accelerated. An unorthodox suggestion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DA4 is just going to wreck everything I've done with naming here. (And probably also the entire premise of this story, but there's a difference between "AU where the Veil is still there" and "AU where a specific character has a different name," y'know.)

“Flashy as always, Publia,” said the Architect, pitching his baritone into its best timbre. “That sort of stunt will get you killed, one of these days. Not permanently, to your regret, I’m sure.”

“How did you get in?” asked the Augur, calling off the ice storm.

“When your guards opened your doors to let _them_ in,” said…Publia, nodding at the Architect and the rest. Her face was still concealed by her spell armor. Seeming to realize this, perhaps by means of the motion, she let it drop before she spoke again. “Three doors into this room, that I can see, and not one of them has a dispelling lintel. You have gotten so careless, in such a short number of years. You’d have been murdered in your sleep, in our imperium. And look at you! I could laugh; you’re a broodmother now, while I’m not.”

“It seems I must be the one to make proper introductions,” said the Architect. “Lady Fidelia Publia ‘the Madman’ Zinovia, High Priestess of the Cult of Zazikel; Wardens Emeriti Enchanter Alim Surana and Ser Zevran Arainai—et cetera.”

“Elven ghouls. You don’t see those very often. A bit desperate for allies, aren’t you, Architect?”

“Hardly. They were the ones to discover the true resistance to the Blight.”

“So it is possible, then? To cure it?”

“I don’t know about cure,” said Alim. “Prevent, possibly. In a trial with drakelings, we managed to protect most of them from contagion.”

The air fairly crackled with the Madman’s sudden anger, if one was looking at the Fade which overlaid the mortal world, as Alim was. “Only ‘ _most’_ of them?”

“Fifteen out of seventeen. That is considered a pretty good rate, for a first trial.” How to be reassuring? thought Alim. “Disease resistance is not absolute, for any disease. Sometimes it requires multiple exposures or inoculations to build immunity. Had we the resources for multiple doses, perhaps the last two would have been protected as well.”

The Madman considered the statistics for a long moment. “Once your dragon is safe, you will look for how to cure it truly. Otherwise, I tell you nothing.”

“We will research that possibility, then,” said the Architect.

“Don’t I get a say in this?” asked Alim.

“Does not the world’s foremost Blight researcher want to know how to cure the Blight?” said the Architect.

“I…yes, but on my own terms.”

Alim felt the trap of words closing in around him, and around Zevran, too. To protect Razikale, and pass the knowledge of how it had been done on to the Wardens, so they could, with any luck, do the same for Lusacan. That had been the plan. Then what was left of the song would be unbroken, and he and Zevran could leave and flee to the deepest parts of the earth, away from ancient magisters and their tattered, decaying glory. And then…? Well, that would be a problem for then. But now, it seemed they were yoked to yet another such magister, at least as much if not more overbearing, who wanted to end not just the Blights but with them all of their eternity.

 “Good,” said the Madman, oblivious to the quiet turmoil before her. “I was working with the Forgewright, until a few months ago. As the two of you do here, he helped build a complex around me. I had ended up in the west Anderfels, as you said, and by good fortune the deeper parts of that land are rich in minerals. I have heard the soil is red there; that would be iron.”

“It is,” said Zevran. “The weather and the darkspawn make mining almost impossible, and no one has figured out how to collect it from dust storms yet. If they could, it might be the richest nation in the world.”

“Mostly, we armed those darkspawn loyal to us through the song,” said the Madman. “Meanwhile, the Forgewright crafted runes based on my magic of concealment. That is why you could not find us, Augur. Then, quite recently, we obtained lyrium with the Blight actually in it, and the runes became much more efficient. We were able to expand our complex significantly.

“Then, the Watchman and the Appraiser found us. The Last Moon is their equal creation, but it is in the Watchman’s name, because his god is still alive. They wanted the Forgewright’s power, to create magical instruments and arm their followers. It took them years to find us; our runes worked. Still, one cannot hide all signs of a complex. Our wares eventually turned up elsewhere. Even some few of our darkspawn were killed by Wardens in The Last Moon, or Wardens who showed the equipment to them, or some such. Eventually, the origins were traced.

“And then they said they were trying to rule the world with the Blight, but not only that, they were opposing some who might have the key to resisting it. I would not mind if there were no possibility of change from what we are, but the possibility now exists, and I want to be free of it. You do not know what hunger is, when a broodmother resists growing into her full form. You do not know how it is to choose between that hunger and being trapped. None of them do.”

The Augur cleared her throat.

“You just reincarnated into one, already grown—you are barely even connected to its mass. I start as you see me now, each time, and each time I must grow into _that_ , again. Do you know how many times I have tried to die, to stop it? Each time I come back, even more hungry than before. If I sate it, I grow into…” she pointed wordlessly at the Augur’s bloated form, “…and I have to churn out hundreds of those disgusting twisted _things._ I want the hunger to end, and it will not stop unless I am cured or dead. So I spoke up to those three, telling them that, and they said for my ‘treason’ in advocating the former, they would try to give me the latter. Their binding did not work. I starved myself so I could come here, and see your work for myself, and now I am here.”

“We will try to do something to alleviate your condition,” promised the Architect.

Alim did pity her for her eternal hunger, but cared more for his own and Zevran’s freedom.

“How many fully converted ghouls and darkspawn do the three of them have? Are all three original darkspawn in your old complex?” asked Zevran. The debrief needed to be done properly.

“I was immobile, and did not know all their movements. At least twenty ghouls of high rank. Perhaps more. They feed Tainted blood to their inner circle of cultists. There are several dozen that have not turned, yet, at least. As for darkspawn, I know ours were about five thousand. I do not know how many the other two have. A few, but I do not know if they control a broodmother. With the Forgewright, there were myself and a dwarf. We wanted to take a Kossith, for their strength, but we were unable to obtain one.”

“Your weapons. Are they superior to ours? Our personal ones, and those of our forces.” Zevran’s blades were his own that he had brought with him on his Calling, ones he had privately commissioned during his term as High Constable. They had been repaired a few times, and the grips changed to accommodate the new structure of his hands; yet one could still see the original quality. Alim and the Architect had high-quality Nevarran staves, while all their emissaries had apprentice-grade ones made in Ferelden. Mundane disciples were armed with work from South Korcari.

“Oh, definitely better, for blades. About the same for staves. Not that the staves matter so much as the wielder. A good staff is pleasant, but it has to be really bad before it affects spellwork much.”

“Do they know where Razikale and Lusacan are?” asked Alim. Which also meant, how high up were their Warden contacts?

“They know approximately where. The ley lines converge, and those are easy to divine, if you know that that is what the ley lines are. I do not think they know which god is which. If I had to guess, though, Razikale is the one here, in the South.”

“It’s not like it isn’t named ‘Razikale’s Reach’ or anything,” pointed out Zevran.

“I was right, then. I think the others have come to the same conclusion.”

And so it went. Questions upon questions; details of the others’ powers, the layout of the Forgewright’s thaig (in hopes of correlating it to Deep Roads maps), anything about the Last Moon, how the Madman managed to cloak herself so well.

“He can cloak himself?” asked the Madman, to Zevran. “I thought you said he was not a mage.”

“It is something like shrieks—sharlocks—do,” said Zevran. “Like this.” He called his power to him, going hazy to the sight and seeming as smoke over the stone floor. On the plane of magic sense, however, the signal of ‘there is something here and it is wearing a brightly painted sign saying “ignore this sign”’ was unmistakable.

“Interesting,” said the Madman, looking at the Zevran-shaped wavering smoke. “Sharlocks do have a little of that power, but most is skill and natural coloration. You must have mage blood, from somewhere.”

“Could you teach me to do it better?” asked Zevran.

“Probably not, very much,” admitted the Madman. “What I do takes a level of power you will simply never have. I could offer a few tips on technique, but what you can already do would fool all but the most observant mortals.”

“Even Wardens? They can sense darkspawn, by sympathetic magic.”

“How exactly does their magic work?”

“They drink the blood of darkspawn, plus a bit of the blood of an Archdemon, which infects them and allows them to access a bit of the hivemind,” said Alim.

“Oh. That is not so bad. They might notice him, eventually, but they would notice him last. By then, he will have stabbed them from behind.”

 

“Well, that is probably everything we will get,” said Zevran, many hours later. They had sent the Madman out of the room, in the company of several Disciples, who had been instructed not to let go of her until they reached an enclosed room and barred the doors.

“I still think she is holding some things back,” said the Architect.

“Perhaps,” said Zevran. “But you must remember, she was immobile for most of the time she was in that complex. Of course she knows little of what occurred or even what lay outside the room she was in. And if we want her to keep being our ally, violent methods of persuasion are not really an option, no?”

“Her powers are only sneaking around and magic shielding, and giving birth to darkspawn. We would hardly be lost without her,” said the Architect. “And there are ways of breaking someone so that they stay loyal to you. I believe someone trained in a cult of assassins would have some knowledge of how that was done.”

Zevran forced his face blank. “Yes, but there are two main problems with that. One is that the Madman is a powerful mage who has been an independent adult and had the endurance of a darkspawn for over a thousand years. We have no access to magebane—it is illegal outside of prisons—and so subjecting her to such things, or manipulating her in that way, would be difficult if not impossible. The other problem is time. The Crows took impressionable children, and broke them for seven to ten years. How much time do we have until the darkspawn are close to Razikale?”

“About a year, perhaps two,” said the Augur.

“ _One year?_ ” squawked the Architect. “You estimated _fifteen_ , when I asked for an update just a couple years ago—the time I brought Zevran here. I saw it with my own eyes, during my inspections. Have they turned into dwarves, or what has happened?”

“My scouts report that there was a fault in the rock, and the type changed and the texture softened. I have seen it through their eyes. It is not the sort of thing one could guess before hitting it.”

“And you did not think to tell me?” said the Architect, the Void crackling around him.

“I was going to tell you when you came to discuss the results of the dragon trials. We found out even as you were making preparations for it. But then some visitors turned up.”

“So we are not torturing the Madman, then?” asked Zevran. “No? Good.”

“I suppose not,” said the Architect. “Much as I still suspect her.”

“You are not to do experiments on her, either,” said the Augur. “I am surprised she was willing to talk to you at all.”

“There is not much new to learn from studying her, anyway,” said the Architect, acquiescing.

“What did you _do_ to her?” asked Alim.

“She was the first Broodmother. Of course I had to try to understand the phenomenon.”

“Just stop,” said Zevran. “I do not even want to know.”

The first broodmother. Alim could think of any number of things he would do, to try to understand them. He had dissected the first broodmother he had ever killed, to find out the major anatomy, but only after it was dead. The Architect was no real surgeon, and it seemed that the Madman must have been alive, at the time. No wonder her name seemed so…apt.

“One year,” said Alim, trying not to think further on the Architect’s kind of ‘experiments,’ or of how there must be more to learn from her, with modern alchemical analysis. “There are three main issues, then. One is getting to Razikale before the darkspawn do, and without corrupting her. We have been thinking about that one for years, albeit at lowered priority. The difficulty is in putting the plan in motion so fast. Two, the volume of the inoculation. It was quite a volume even for drakelings. We want to be able to perform the injection quickly. We do not have the time to be injecting Razikale with gallons of serum. Perhaps multiple injections would be in order. But we do not know how much space we will have to work with, around the dragon, or how much of her body will be exposed. We may have to inject all of it into the only penetrable spot available. Third, guaranteeing the resistance. Two of our drakelings did not become immune. A multi-part series of inoculations would be the ideal solution, but I doubt we will have the time.”

“There is a fourth,” countered the Architect. “The Watchman, the Forgewright, and the Appraiser may try to stop us.”

“We will resist that if it happens,” said Alim. “The Madman may be able to shield us from them, and they do not have an Augur.”

“Do you still wish to torture her now?” asked Zevran, aside.

“You and I are not the only ones who can scry, you know,” reminded the Augur. “They simply need more formal preparations. Water, blood, and lyrium. The working would do as well through the Void as the Fade, if not better.”

“So that is real. No one knows how to do that, anymore. Well, maybe in Tevinter, but if it exists there, it’s a government secret.”

The Architect sighed. “How do modern mages do anything?”

“With runes and machinery, usually.”

“I will have to show you that, at least. I see I have neglected certain things, due to your natural ability,” said the Architect. “But forget bemoaning the barbarism of modernity. How do we reach Razikale before anyone else does? The enemy may be using real tools to drill towards her as we speak.”

“Hire a team of dwarves?” suggested Zevran.

“We cannot simply hire a team of dwarves,” said the Architect. “If you have forgotten, we are Blighted and dead.”

“No, he’s got a point,” said Alim. “We have the alliance with that Carta dwarf, Cadash. You know, the Warden one. We also have a serum capable of protecting  animals and dragons. You would like to test it on people, I know you. We could keep a team of dwarves safe and unblighted, already. They would not even have to be made Wardens. We tell them the serum will protect them, and we get a Warden to perform the injections. Du Loup already knows, but if we can’t get her, I could teach any of the others.”

“Yes, but what team could we get? No good team would willingly agree to this. That is too many to kidnap.”

“Even the worst-rate, lyrium-addled team of miners would do better than a bunch of unawakened darkspawn. The darkspawn do not have explosives. No one has ever seen them figure out so much as the lyrium-based kind, let alone gaatlok or Kirkwall charges.”

“Additionally,” said Zevran, “are the darkspawn actually going at this the best way? They have the most direct route, by instinct—I can feel the pull—but is that actually the best way through the rock?”

“I do not know,” said the Architect. “I have not seen the area in a few years; I would have to see it, to know. I pray they do not. We will try to obtain a team of dwarven miners, and then we will see.”

“I only hope the others have not already done the same,” observed Zevran.

“What do we do if they have?” asked the Augur.

“We hire more of them,” said Alim.

“And we kill the ones they have,” finished Zevran. “We are out of time for secrecy or discretion, no? As the Crow assassins used to say, an obvious but completed job is better than one not completed at all. Granted, a sloppy job usually results in almost endless punishment duties, but at least one generally lives to tell the tale.”

“So I’ll write to Cadash, then?” asked Alim. “Yes? Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Hire a team of dwarves"--just like "hire a samurai," but it's dwarves.
> 
> The reason I did not elaborate much on what the Architect did to the Madman (and, indeed, only went into Alim's thoughts on the subject because I was under wordcount) is because spoilers on the story of how the Sidereal breached the Fade.
> 
> At this point, I've written chapter 32 already (it's on Patreon, as I type this note), and from there I think there are less than 15 chapters left, unless plot happens that I haven't accounted for. It's odd, realizing I might actually complete something. It's odd to realize that, barring a forced hiatus of some sort (*crosses fingers*), this will likely be done by October and I will have completed writing a novel in about a year. I'm excited to be able to plan out the next one, though. Properly, this time, with an entire outline per chapter and everything.


	32. Much Ado about Something

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Last Moon makes a move. An old Chantry practice is revived, with long-term effects upon which we can only speculate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone gets kidnapped in this chapter, so warning for that.

So the experiment had worked, Elgara read. Not on quite all the dragons, but that was pretty good, for a first attempt. Immunity was a strange thing; it did not always work the first time. Elgara had once known someone who had managed to get measles twice. What was Hessy doing these days, anyway? Did she still live in Halamshiral? It might be good to enclose a brief note in her next letter to her mother, just in case.  
That was for later. Right now, she had to get to the lab to run the bloodwork for the in vivo experiments on administration of dragon blood to Warden recruits. They grumbled about getting needle sticks every two months, but they had all signed a contract beforehand, and missing a blood draw without an ironclad excuse would be grounds for a court-martial.  
It had only been four months since the last Joining group, so it was too early to tell very much, especially on the magic end of things, but so far the results seemed to be promising. The dragon blood group had fewer self-reported complications and generally lower miasma counts, though of course forty people was really much too small to say anything for sure. The next study would be larger, she thought as she walked. When they saw her results, Weisshaupt would give her as many people as she could want.  
Elgara did not feel the spell hit, until she woke up from it.  
  
_Attn: Warden-Commander Stroud-Chandlere_  
_C/o Serault Warden Research Facility_  
_72 Rue de Lens-Convex, Serault, Orlais_  
_2 Wintermarch 78_

_Ser Stroud-Chandlere,_

_Greetings. I am enquiring as to the whereabouts of Enchanter Elgara du Loup, a researcher assigned to your outpost. She and I were stationed together at Soldier’s Peak, Ferelden until 9:77, and we have frequently corresponded since then._

_I have not received correspondence from her in five weeks, when usually she sends a letter weekly. I fear that she may be ill or injured, or even suddenly transferred due to the nature of her research. If it is a matter of secrecy beyond my rank, I will accept that answer. However, in any other case, I am greatly concerned to discover the answer. We are very close, but my skills were not deemed applicable for a position at Serault._

_I pray that the Maker and the Stone grant that she is well, and this is merely a disturbance in the mails of some sort. However, I have previously written to other acquaintances of mine in Serault, and they know nothing pertaining to her—hardly surprising; she is an elf and they are dwarven merchants. Thus I must turn to you, her commanding officer, even if this seems to be a personal matter._

_\--Warden-Corporal Nesha Cadash_

_Griffon Place Outpost_  
_1 Rue du Griffon, Val Royeaux, Orlais_

  
_Attn: Warden-Corporal Nesha Cadash_  
_Griffon Place Outpost_  
_1 Rue du Griffon, Val Royeaux, Orlais_  
_11 Wintermarch 78_

_Ser Cadash,_

_Greetings. I regret the delay in this message, and that we were previously unable to inform you that Ser Du Loup is missing. It is for such reasons that the Weisshaupt Department of Personnel and Records advises listing primary relationships under the designation “spouse/alternatively formalized relationship/common-law partner,” even if the partner is independently employed and childless and/or if the duration falls short of the residential jurisdiction’s common-law partnership requirement. Ser Du Loup’s only designated contact and pension recipient is her mother; she confirmed your relationship with Du Loup and authorized the disclosure of her status. Should she return, please update both your information as applicable._

_Senior Warden-Enchanter 2nd Class Du Loup was seen leaving the barracks building on the night of 30th Firstfall; the gate log indicates that she reported her destination as Research Facility Building 1, where she has dedicated lab space. According to her assistant, who has temporarily taken over her duties, she had previously expressed intent to process part of a batch of blood samples that night. There is no record or witness of her entering that building, and she has not been seen since. The official theory is that she met with some assault or calamity, but no body has been found, nor has anyone reported seeing anyone matching her appearance. Her identification portrait has been circulated throughout the city but not outside of it. If you have any ideas or information on where she might be, please alert me or the SWRF Personnel Officer immediately._

_With my deepest sympathies,_  
_Warden-Commander Stroud-Chandlere_

 _Serault Warden Research Facility_  
_72 Rue de Lens-Convex, Serault, Orlais_  
  
“She’s missing?” Alim flicked a flame across each of the tips of his fingers, a way to control magic when he was panicked enough that the magic might act on its own if he did not.  
“That is what it says in Cadash’s letter,” said Zevran, carefully masking his own panic. “From the circumstantial evidence, I would suspect the Last Moon. Of course, there is also the possibility of simple assault. She is a young woman, and though she is no doubt quite good at fighting, if she were ambushed properly she could easily be taken. True, she is a Warden, but it is likely she was wearing a casual uniform, at that hour, one that would not be recognized as a uniform by most people.”  
“If it is the Last Moon, she could be tortured. If it is not the Last Moon, we have still lost our main asset in the scientific arm of the Wardens. Hammett is never going to get anywhere. By all accounts he’s a good battlemage, but there are times when I’ve questioned if he can actually read.”  
“That is a bit of a harsh assessment,” said Zevran.  
“Then explain why he can’t even get transferred to Amaranthine, after putting in applications quarterly.”  
“They already have three battlemages, there. He keeps complaining about it.”  
“He may be at fault for Du Loup’s disappearance, you know,” cautioned the Architect.  
“You’d think he’d be more effective, if he were.”  
“He could be using apparent failure as a coverup. Do you have any independent confirmation that he has actually applied to Amaranthine at all?”  
“No, but what would the Last Moon have to gain from one of their agents staying at Soldier’s Peak indefinitely? That is not where the action happens, in the Wardens. And like, I suppose he could have masterminded an abduction from an entirely different country from where it was going to happen, but I doubt it.”  
“Admit it,” said Zevran to the Architect. “You just refuse to believe that anyone who is not a mage could possibly have an inner life or do anything.”  
“I suppose in these times you may be right, but I am just being realistic. The Watchman and the Appraiser would hardly select someone who could not do magic. They sent Eyras to us, as a messenger, when any mortal would do.”  
“Any mortal?” asked Zevran. “Any mortal, against a Somniari, a former Chamberlain of the Grey, and an ex-Crow? No, the other Magisters sent the only person who might have a prayer of escaping us alive, should we try to prevent him from doing so. In the choice of a spy—well, assuming it is indeed one of ours and not simply anyone with access to the relevant mails, there are only six choices. They would take whatever they could get—would they not?”  
The Architect glanced at Alim, asking for his opinion. Alim nodded.  
“Back to the point,” said Alim. “They would want Du Loup, because she knows the most about how the inoculation works. They want to figure out how to sabotage or counteract it. There are two ways they might. One, overheating the serum until it is useless. If we keep the serum in containers warded against fire and keyed to us or the Wardens by magic so that no one else can open them, that would probably do the trick. Two, tainting Razikale so aggressively that the passive resistance factor is overwhelmed before her body can develop its own resistance. That would be a lot more feasible.”  
“And she knows that, so we must simply hope that she does not break under torture and that they will not risk her mind by using blood magic,” said Zevran grimly. “Cadash is working on the team of dwarves. She’s found a team; now she has to equip them—she has enough coin from us already, she writes. She will be going with them, having gotten furlough. I do wonder what strings she pulled for that.”  
“When?” asked Alim.  
“They should arrive in about four weeks, short estimate.”  
“The dwarves will need inoculations. I will have to teach Cadash how. And who else can we get here, in that time? Because this is the final push, to protect the Razikale.”  
“It hardly seems possible,” said the Architect. “Decades of trying, and then suddenly the day is here so fast it feels as though I almost missed it.”  
“Life is generally that way,” said Zevran.  
  
Elgara had gone to a place in her head where pain did not matter. These people had drugged her with something to keep her from using magic—was it really magebane? Where did they even get it—and, ironically, it dulled what they were doing to her and made it easier to create that distance.  
Her captors had stopped trying to beat the secrets out of her, for the moment, and were conversing in what sounded like Tevene, but too fast and too muffled through a door for her to follow all of it, even if she were not chained to the floor and somewhat concussed. She got only bits of words or phrases, with mumbling in between.  
“Nolt cedere…debetne sanguine extra…”  
Another voice, more fluent and faster: “Non, …enim…non habemus, atqu’est…prohibeatur.”  
“Sed, si nox facere…”  
“Non audemus!” There was a pause, then, more distinctly, because of the scorn in it: “Etiam, est ‘noctem facere,’” and then some mumbling that probably translated as something along the lines of “for fuck’s sake,” by the tone.  
The door opened, and the two men came back in. Elgara looked at them through half-closed eyes, pretending to be unconscious. They had finger-width cords of Rivain-gum, this time—they seemed to prefer instruments that hurt a lot but did very little real damage. Perhaps they did not realize that she was a healer, first, before she was a researcher, with a focus on combat medicine, and knew, in very detailed theory and now in several weeks of almost equally detailed practice, what the body could take.  
“Hey, rat, wake up,” said one of the men, and kicked her in the solar plexus—pulling the kick, even.  
Non-lethal methods, Elgara reflected after she had screamed, still hurt quite a lot.  
  
It had taken two weeks for the Arcane Court to grant their request—two weeks in which a missing woman might easily be murdered. Two weeks added to the number she had already been missing. Nesha wondered if the Court would have come to a decision faster had Elgara du Loup been human.  
True, it was similar to what Nevarran Accord Templars had used to do. True, the Arcane Court had only let the Wardens practice their mass blood testing on the grounds that the preserved blood never be used for anything other than medical testing. Still, there had been a way to locate the woman she loved, had been all along, and Nesha had barely been able to stop herself from breaking into the SWRF medical archives and stealing the phylactery of Elgara’s blood. But now, finally—and likely too late, by all statistics—the Arcane Court had issued a ruling that medical phylacteries might be used as trackers, per individual warrant, in probable cause cases of abduction or murder. They had had to find a retired Nevarran Accord Templar, nearly seventy years old, to show them how to activate the phylactery spell and turn it into a tracker. Then, Nesha received the first good news of the ordeal: the vial glowed. Elgara was probably still alive.  
Nesha had been allowed to go to Serault for all of this, because it was the off season for important diplomatic events in Val Royeaux. She had divided her time between lobbying the Arcane Court and cobbling together a mining expedition team from the local Carta. Today, though, her whole focus would be on the operation to rescue Elgara. “Operation Sun Wolf,” they had named it, after the meaning of Elgara’s name.  
The phylactery vial had been split, so that her location could be triangulated. This had narrowed it down to a hotel in Serault’s sprawling tourist quarter, where any number of people from all parts of the world came and went.  
It was almost anticlimactic, walking through the halls of a hotel looking at a small, glowing vial in one’s hand, trying to see if it were brighter at this end of the hall or that. The door was barely even locked, when they found her. No need for the miniature battering ram the town guard had brought, just the concierge’s master key. Elgara was chained to a chandelier ring recently screwed into the floor, looking as if she had been run over by a cart—and she was all alone. There was no sign of her captors.  
The building had been under lockdown for the past several hours. Whoever had taken her had probably left much earlier.  
“Likely as soon as the Arcane Court’s decision was announced,” said one of the guards. He prodded some ash in the room’s fireplace. “Look. I’d bet a round of drinks this used to be a newspaper.”  
“Following the case to see what the press knew, and knowing we knew at least that much and probably more,” said Nesha. She had joined the Wardens of her own will, as soon as she was old enough, but before that, she had been trained as a Carta mastermind. Had she been kidnapping someone, she would have followed the news as well. Or, really, simply had someone on the inside. So, whoever the Last Moon operatives had been, or who had directed them to Elgara and also knew the significance of her research, they had no contacts in the Serault Guard or the SWRF outpost who had been directly involved with the case, if they were using the papers to keep track of the authorities. That, at least, was encouraging. On the other hand, they might have used the personal ads to send coded messages (Nesha had read a book about that, once)…no, they probably did not do that. If the Carta did not do it, probably no one did it. Probably. Hopefully. Nesha decided to believe the option that meant that whoever did this was less likely to be able to hurt Elgara again.  
Across the hall from the crime scene, a Warden healer was treating Elgara in a vacant hotel room. She had tacked a poster of some sort of glowing glyph to the wall, making motions as if fanning invisible smoke towards Elgara. Some kind of magic, Nesha supposed. Elgara was wrapped in a blanket, and seemed dazed but conscious.  
Nesha stood in the doorway, afraid she might interrupt some vital spell, until the healer noticed her and said she could come in. Pausing just long enough to make sure none of Elgara’s fingers were broken or anything, she squeezed Elgara’s hand and held onto it, unwilling to ever let her go again.  
“You’re here,” said Elgara.  
“You’re safe,” said Nesha. “How bad?”  
“They wanted to hurt, not maim or…they didn’t rape me, if that’s what you mean.”  
“Last Moon?” asked Nesha, lowering her voice to a whisper.  
“Huh? They asked about the serum. They could not have known that unless someone told them.”  
“You must not have gotten the last letter before you were taken. They’re a group led by someone else like the Architect, only with the opposite goal. We have a mole, then, as Surana suspected. Did they learn anything from you?”  
“Little. Later.” The healer had stopped casting and had started to take Elgara’s vitals again. Nesha stood back and watched as the woman checked her pulse and then her pupils. She had had a concussion, then. That sounded like a bit more than ‘hurt’—well, perhaps not if one were used to magical healing. Dwarven communities were resistant to the idea of mage healers, preferring their own apothecaries and surgeons—perhaps in part because it was harder to get any spell to ‘take’ on a dwarf—and even after years in the Wardens, Nesha still measured injuries and ailments by that metric. It was a more cautious metric, so she saw relatively little reason to abandon it.  
The healer seemed satisfied with whatever she saw, judging by her expression and movements. She asked Elgara something that Nesha did not quite catch—it sounded like something along the lines of ‘should I stay or go?’—and then left the room, though she did not take her supplies with her. Nesha noticed that the glyph on the wall was still there, but no longer glowed.  
Elgara noticed her looking at it. “It’s a portable healer’s glyph. Salutas caputis. Healing the brain is very complicated, so most healers would use a fixed glyph for it, in addition to their own will and the help of a spirit. It’s the difference between giving the magic a map and just telling it to take the second street on the right, really. A college hospital would have a permanent glyph in one of its medical theaters, but most infirmaries just have scrolls with lyrium ink.”  
“Are you really all right?”  
“Now that I’m healed, yes. They actually specifically avoided head trauma. I hit my head when I fell, if you can believe it. Sleep spell. If I’d thought faster, I probably could have resisted it.”  
“You couldn’t have expected a sleep spell out of nowhere!”  
“I know. I just…I feel like I should have been able to do something.”  
“I know.”  
“They know the serum isn’t magic. They know it can be destroyed by fire. They asked a lot about how it worked when it isn’t magic. Fortunately, they knew next to nothing about vitology.”  
“Who were ‘they’?”  
“Two men. At least one was a mage. One Tevinter, or fluent in Modern Tevene, the other I’m less sure about. Not fluent, but I can’t place the accent in that language. They wore masks, at all times, not the heraldic sort but just plain knitted cloth, with mosquito netting for eyeholes. Also gloves. I might recognize the voices, but nothing else. They seemed to be trying to avoid leaving any magical traces of themselves.” Unfortunately, most of those were also the more subtle physical traces that guard alchemists looked for—hair, or blood, or spit, or any trace of the body.  
“Anything else?”  
“I think they had access to magebane. They were giving me something that blocked the Fade, or at least muddled me up enough I couldn’t use it. They gave me just enough to block magic, until the last time when they wanted it to last I guess, so they knew the right dosage, too. It’s wearing off, now, but I still don’t think I’ll be able to cast properly for a few hours.”  
“Maybe we can trace it. It’s illegal, and probably hard to make or get. Did they learn anything else?”  
“They learned a lot of basic alchemy and vitology,” said Elgara, smiling a bit. “I don’t actually know most of the details of how Surana did it. The basic ingredients, yes, but I managed to keep those back. I thought of giving them a recipe that was inaccurate, but I was afraid they’d know or manage to figure out something too close to the real thing. Besides, he’ll probably change it some before Six. So, I bought time by telling them a lot about alchemy and vitology that they didn’t actually need to know, in the most confusing way I could think of. Apparently, they did not actually understand enough in the first place to know that I was bullshitting, which means whoever the mole is also doesn’t.”  
“To be fair, that’s pretty much all of us except you. And me, because of you. And maybe Hammet? He went to magic college, though.”  
“He also helped with the dragon trials. He knows it’s not very magic. And they know about the dragon trial. They already knew, so I didn’t hold back on that. They were more interested in how the serum worked and what an Archdemon’s chances would be. I may have…emphasized the uncertainty beyond a strict reading of the results.”  
“No weird magister truth serum or blood magic?”  
Elgara shuddered. “I think they considered blood magic—I couldn’t follow the conversation very well, my Tevene’s not that good. They didn’t actually do it. I heard the word ‘prohibeatur,’ which means forbidden. I guess they wanted me to still be capable of thinking” She paused. “And then…it’s odd. For some reason, they were going on about ‘making night.’ ‘Noctem facere.’ Only, one of them, the one who was less fluent, said it as ‘nox facere,’ first. It’s an odd error. That’s a pretty basic word. And like, you usually see it in phrases about time, so most people would make an error like ‘noctem fuget’ where it should be ‘nox,’ object for subject, if they would make an error at all, not the other way around. I don’t know why it’s bugging me.”  
“If you say so,” said Nesha, shrugging. “I don’t speak Tevene at all. All the new stuff’s in Orlesian. The real question is, what’s the story we tell to the Wardens and the Guard?”  
  
“They are moving ahead with it,” said the man kneeling before Issus Eyras. “They also do not suspect me, or if they do, they do not show it. In fact, they seem to think I would be in danger. I intercepted the last missive sent to one of my ‘co-conspirators,’ and it is functionally identical to that sent to me. Different hand—probably that thuggish ghoul, he doesn’t look educated—and a few different phrasings, but functionally identical. I do not think it is a code.”  
“Do you have copies of each, to be subjected to decryption?”  
“Of course I do. I thank you kindly for that duplication rune. I could not have done that on my own, or afforded the rune.”  
‘Duplication’ was perhaps a misleading name for that technology, Eyras thought privately. It was a dual-spell sympathetic magic; ink detection and an ink summon. Or ground pencil lead and pencil summon, if one put it in the key space. But it effectively duplicated documents, down to the handwriting and variations in ink thickness, so they were called duplication runes. Of course, they did not replicate pen impressions in the paper, and the legitimate runes left an easily detectable magical trace on the non-original document. Not that a forger could not get around that; quite the contrary.  
“Do not ingratiate yourself,” Eyras said out loud, as he thought this. “You do not thank the Wardens for your weapons or your uniform, so do not thank me for providing a needed tool. Your thanks will not help you, if you fail in this task.”  
“We must thwart them before they reach the dragon,” said the man. “If we break through to it first and infect it, they will not be able to stop it. I could perhaps find a team of miners willing to ‘help the Wardens,’ much as the enemy plans to do; they have access to tools the darkspawn do not.”  
“See that you do so. We cannot fail. Lusacan must rise. Till the night covers all.”  
“Till the night covers all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have been paying attention (and are good at grammar), you should be able to guess who the traitor is. Dun dun DUHHN!
> 
> Seriously, though, I hope this chapter doesn't feel like the story is going off the rails.
> 
> Also, lore note, because glyphs and runes are coming up a lot: the difference between perma-glyphs/summoning circles and runes is like the difference between programming languages. Glyphs are how mages think of a spell, whereas runes are developed more by brute force and prior "recipes." A glyph usually does not have to be as precise as a rune, because a mage's intent can correct for a bit of sloppy handwriting. Lyrium is processed differently between the two as well, most likely. For runes, I'm guessing you want the lyrium molten but still living--it's like trying to heat milk, I imagine. For permanent glyphs, you really cook it. For summoning installations, you alloy it with metals, most of which have much higher melting point than lyrium. (If pressed, I'll say that lyrium probably has a melting point similar to but lower than lead.)


	33. Preparations and Excursions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Trio fine-tune the serum. Nesha and Elgara head out with their mining team, and finally get a sex scene (because they are definitely a couple). Violations of humanoid testing protocol, if Thedas has one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late by a week. Shit happened, including having to edit this chapter from what I originally wrote, so that it would fit with what is actually in the Frostback Basin. As you can imagine, having to actually play through a ton of that ridiculously vertical map took a while that I had meant to spend writing. Seriously, its verticality is almost on par with Dishonored, and it's very organic in a way the rest of the game with its shard parkour is not, though the Forbidden Oasis does look like something of a rough draft. (It's also a lot smaller than the Frostback Basin.) Updates should be regular after this *crosses fingers.*

“The real difficulty,” said Alim, “is how do we get more of the water and growth medium out?” The growth medium was not particularly a good thing to have injected into one’s self, even when sterile, and posed the greatest risk for serum contamination, whether internal—by preventing the miasma from being weakened enough—or external—it made it possible for an amount of invading vivicula that would not normally matter to take hold, because it was designed for growing them, after all. Currently, their culture medium was a mixture of eggs, sugar, distilled water, and sheep brains.

“Vital lysing agents?” suggested Zevran.

“No, that will digest the miasmata we do want, in that quantity.”

“Why not use that to weaken the miasma, instead of heat?”

“I suppose we could try. But then how do we get the water out?”

“A micropermeable membrane with a hypertonic solution?”

“What the void. Why not try that?”

And so on. Zevran’s suggestion of a micropermeable membrane did not work, at least not in its original form; even when weakened by protein-specific lysing agents, the Taint quickly attacked the thin sheets of sheep subdermis and spilled the saturated saline into the whole culture, destroying the test sample. An atomically thin sheet of common wood over a “sponge” of salt and cellulose, with the culture poured on top, worked much better. Then the problem was scaling it up enough to produce a quantity of serum sufficient for a very large dragon, or a team of dwarves—as opposed to a few drams.

Alim was quite glad he no longer required sleep. Otherwise, there would not have been enough stimulants in the world to fix that problem. Every room that could be spared in the Augur’s complex was filled with vats. He had invented an entirely new spell to shave off sheets of wood so thin that they could bend like paper. It required two separate glyphs, drawn from at once, plus unshakeable focus and clear intent and visualization of what, exactly, the caster was trying to do. Alim had resorted to taking lyrium to boost his magic, for the first time in a couple decades. (Completely ordinary lyrium, not the red stuff.)

A perk of being a darkspawn, he discovered, was that lyrium did not appear to send him into a manic-depressive spiral anymore. He wished he had discovered that sooner. It was odd, to just take the stuff and feel nothing more than a heightening of magic sense and spellpower. He had always felt some bewilderment about how other mages—other healers in particular—could knock back lyrium potions almost like coffee and just go on without a second thought. It was almost disconcerting to realize that he now knew how that felt. Actually, strike the ‘almost.’

The end result was about four gallons of serum. About a quart would be used for animal testing to make sure it was safe. Another quart would be for the team of dwarves. The rest would be injected into Razikale. It was still not as concentrated as any of them would like, but it was the best they could do, in time. They needed to leave for Razikale’s reach—should have left already, really; they would have to run, not walk. By the projected timeline, Cadash and Du Loup and their dwarves were supposed to arrive the next day.

 

Tomorrow. Tomorrow was the day. Tomorrow, barring unlikely and catastrophic accidents, they would reach the place in the Frostbacks where Razikale slept. Until now, it all had seemed like some fantasy of adventure—the secret plots, the ancient magister and ghoul Wardens, the hope of immunizing an Old God. Now it was at hand. One shred of sleep between them and the day of reckoning.

Wardens sleep very little.

Tonight they slept less. Nesha and Elgara sat in their tent, each staring at the lantern flame, not wanting their last day of almost-normal to end.

“What if it doesn’t work?” said Elgara, finally.

“We kill it, then.”

“Which would mean at least one of us dies. I don’t want to. I don’t want you to.”

“It’ll probably work. It worked on most of the dragons you tried it with, and they’ve been refining it since then.”

“I just keep worrying. What if it’s already infected and just dormant? What if the serum is contaminated? What if this Last Moon group fucks us up?”

“Those two ghouls were Wardens. Maybe the killing the archdemon thing still works for them?” suggested Nesha.

“I suppose we can hope. It should; it’s a magic binding. They can artificially bind darkspawn that way, even.”

“Yes; I helped you steal the blood.”

More silence, then, as the lantern flame flickered.

“You know, this is probably the last time we’ll have any privacy before we finish the whole business, which we might not survive. Do you want to take advantage of that?” said Nesha, after a while.

“We might as well,” said Elgara. “Though, honestly, less ‘one last fuck before the end of the world’ and more like ‘I’m never going to get to sleep otherwise, plus it feels good.’” She blew out the lantern. No sense throwing their shadows on the tent as on a pantomime screen, if they could help it. She had her magic; it would be easy to relight it later, if need be.

“Well, also less ‘one last fuck before the end of the world’ and more like ‘it’s going to suck if, on my first vacation with my girlfriend in two years, we don’t even get to have sex because we’re traipsing around with a bunch of ghouls and a team of miners,’” said Nesha.

“Oh, definitely that as well.”

Nesha was already pulling her sleep shift over her head; Elgara did the same. She lay back on her bedroll as Nesha climbed on top of her, kissing her, grinding against her leg, rolling a nipple between her fingers. It was a good start, thought Elgara, cupping Nesha’s bare ass and trying to grind against her in turn—the height difference made it a bit difficult. It would take a while for her arousal to get anywhere from ‘conceptually interested’ to ‘actually ready to fuck,’ but this was definitely pleasant.

Nesha was quicker; Elgara could tell by her breathing. “Ready for more?” she asked.

“Fuck, yes.”

There was a certain rearranging of positions; it is harder, though not necessarily impossible, to do some things to a person who is effectively sitting on top of you. Now Nesha lay back on the bedroll, knees spread, as Elgara put three fingers into her cunt and then leaned in to lick.

Nesha writhed, kicking out one leg and tensing as the pleasure built and those fingers pressed up into her flesh, forcing herself to keep relatively quiet and not wake the entire camp. She bit one hand to keep quiet, and twined the other in Nesha’s hair, pulling just a bit too hard. Elgara liked a bit too hard. At last the pleasure that climbed the walls of her cunt met in the middle, and she grunted around her hand, thrashing her legs and thrusting against Elgara’s mouth.

Now they switched positions again—well, as soon as Nesha managed to regain coherence. Nesha bent down to lick Elgara’s quim…and then popped up again.

“Are you sure you want to keep going? You’re barely even wet.”

“I’m at the point where it would be horribly frustrating not to keep going. Just nerves, about everything. It’s making it difficult.”

“Got it. Sucks when that happens.”

“Just keep going. It’ll happen eventually.”

Nesha licked and sucked until her tongue ached, but Elgara did not seem much closer to orgasm. Time to change it up, then.

“Fingers?” she asked.

Elgara nodded, making a brief noise of assent—it was not actually that dark in their tent, with the moonlight filtering through the cloth, but dark enough she was not sure Nesha could quite see her nodding.

“You’ll still want some lube, I think. Did you bring any? I forgot; I don’t usually need it.”

“Didn’t bring any, either. Magic.” Elgara sat up properly and took Nesha’s hand to cast into it, concentrating on the right shape in the Fade. The Veil was thicker out here in the middle of nowhere than in any city, and that made the spell take a little more effort than normal.

Still, a few moments later, Nesha’s palm was covered in a thick gel. Not grease; this was more like natural lubrication, and it would not stain. (In the most precise terms, it behaved most like _ulmus rubra_ reconstituted with aloe juice and a little glycerin, but less stringy. At the College of Amaranthine, the spell was taught as a substitute for medical lubricant in places where its components were scarce. Officially, anyway.) It was a slightly more complex summon than grease, true—people had been summoning grease for sexual purposes since the beginning of magic, making it a request the Fade knew well and therefore easier than most similar summons—but it was far from difficult, as magic went.

“I really wish I could do that,” said Nesha. Mundane lubricants never felt quite as nice as the summoned stuff—which was, after all, by nature, the platonic ideal of lube.

“Get a rune?” suggested Elgara. “Do they make runes for that? A lube rune.”

“A lube rune,” laughed Nesha. “I’ll be surprised if Janar hasn’t invented that already. Or Davri Corp.”

“If they haven’t, you’ll write them?”

“Of course. We dwarves are really missing out, if we don’t have lube runes.”

By now, Nesha was already making use of the lube, smearing it across Elgara’s lower lips with one hand—her other digging nails into Elgara’s thigh. She pressed towards her entrance, not actually penetrating her but instead stimulating a pair of glands by pressing them, through the lips. Nesha felt Elgara tense under her hand and heard her moan softly. That was good. That meant that what she was doing felt good.

Elgara reached down to rub her clit; no sense in making Nesha do all the work. Spreading her hand into a V, she thrust her clit into the space between her middle and ring fingers, finally feeling that deeper pleasure start to build in her core. The angle was not the best, on her back like this, but turning over or getting a spare blanket to improvise a pillow would take too long. She wanted to come. She wanted to shatter the tension in her body and get some decent sleep for the first time since they’d left Serault—since before the Last Moon or whoever they were had kidnapped her, if she were being honest. (She tried to forget about that entire stretch of weeks, sometimes with alarming success for how recent it was.) With her free hand, she pinched a nipple, hard, and sent a dart of electricity through it, even though it made the muscles in her chest and arm hurt. She thought of doing the same to her entrance, where Nesha had her fingers—though with less current—but that might mess up Nesha’s timing, or end with a nasty labium scratch.

It was still not quite enough. Elgara bent the leg Nesha was not gripping, to try to get a better angle, but still…

“Nesha, how many fingers can you get inside me?”

“Like, three, probably,” said Nesha, a bit breathlessly. She had been rocking her clit against the ground.

“Do that and I’ll come. I just need a little more.” Elgara sped up the movement of her own hand as much as she could without it cramping. Oh, she wished they had done this at an angle where she could really thrust, with gravity working for her and not against her.

Nesha got three fingers in easily (though her fingers were thicker than Elgara’s), lube mixing with Elgara’s own fluids. Then, she simultaneously spread them and angled up.

The pressure against the ceiling of her cunt was almost painful, almost too much. It was also just the right final push to start her orgasm. Elgara let out a sharp “Ha!” as she fell back and let it take her, finally able to release the muscles she had held tensed to be able to come at all. The sharp waves of pleasure in her cunt spread out into a tingling all the way to her toes, as she gasped for breath and sought out the last few aftershocks, fucking back onto Nesha’s fingers.

Nesha felt Elgara clench around her and ground her own pelvis into the floor one last time—that and the knowledge that she had gotten Elgara off was enough for her to come again. She muffled her pleasure against Elgara’s thigh as she continued to work her fingers, even while so overcome.

Eventually, they settled out. Elgara sat up and poked at Nesha, who was still lying with her head on Elgara’s thigh, already half asleep.

“You’re making my leg go numb,” she said.

Sleepily, Nesha got up and found her own bedroll—it was right next to Elgara’s, but there was a kind of crack where the two met and it was uncomfortable to sleep there. She snuggled up next to Elgara anyway, pulling the blanket up over herself, huffing a bit to discover that Elgara had already pulled her shift back on.

Elgara sank down into sleep, grounded by the clingy dwarf. The Veil was thick; her sleep deep and dreamless.

 

It took three tries to find the cave. The ghouls had hidden it well; vines hung over it. Only on close examination did they turn out to be summoned plants and not natural ones. Elgara was quite impressed. And then a parrot attacked her, two seconds later. Why were there parrots in Ferelden? The entire ecosystem of this place seemed much too warm for the latitude. Maybe it had something to do with Razikale herself.

The Frostback Basin had very few places navigable by oxcart, so once the party had reached the foot of the Frostbacks, some of the dwarves pulled handcarts with the heaviest equipment, and the rest, with Nesha and Elgara, carried as much as they could on their backs. They had wound through ravines and zig-zagged up and down the sides of mountains, snuck past giant river-spiders (according to the map, it was almost all one river, which was really more like a large creek; it just wound a lot), marveled at the decrepit remains of tree fortresses, and attracted stares from small groups of Avvar hunters. Now, under a decrepit Tevinter temple, there was a small limestone cave, and in its depths, a tunnel that looked decidedly less natural than the stone around it. Elgara wondered if the ghouls had dug it, or if it were left over from the Blight.

A few hundred paces in, Arainai appeared out of the shadows.

“You are here,” he said. “Is it day or night outside?”

“Day,” answered Elgara. “Late afternoon.”

“Are these all of them?”

“No, there’s a few more behind us, with the handcarts. They go slowly, so the river doesn’t get the heavy equipment.”

“Hmm. I suggest you handle the inoculations, and then we switch out the guards? I have the serum, here.”

Elgara had taught Nesha how to give injections, so they had two people to do that. Arainai also knew how, but, him being fulminantly Blighted, the risk was too great and also he did not want the dwarves to see him that close, if they did not have to. The longer they could pretend that he was another Warden, the better. Anyway, the team was only eight dwarves.

Of course, the Carta miners did not really understand how the inoculation worked. Elgara and Nesha reassured them that it would not make them Wardens, and sadly insisted that no, they could not just drink the stuff, and threatened to withhold pay from the two who were most afraid of needles. Elgara knew an anti-pain spell, and that also helped things along, though it only worked two times out of three on dwarves. In the meantime, Arainai had disappeared and reappeared with a couple extra handcarts. (They smelled as if they had been wiped down with bleach. They probably had.)

The initial roughly-cut passage eventually opened onto a wider and much more ancient causeway. A couple more miles, and Arainai called a halt.

“We should camp here,” he said.

“Where’s the work site?” asked the head miner—Elgara did not remember his name. She would ask Nesha later.

“Over there,” said Arainai, pointing. “About a hundred yards.”

“Set up camp,” ordered Nesha, in her most commanding tone.

Once the miners were busy, Arainai looked at the Wardens and signaled “come with me.” They followed him down the causeway to another rough tunnel.

“This is it?” asked Nesha.

“Yes,” said the Architect, appearing within it. “After a number of kinds of scrying and scientific measurements, we found this to be the most efficient way to Razikale. As you can see, we have already started.”

“Where’s Surana?” asked Elgara.

“Right here,” said the man himself, appearing from behind the Architect. “He’s tall.” Surana fumbled around within a pack he was holding. “I have something for you—copies of our research. One each. That way, you can be sure of at least one of you getting this back to the Wardens. It will save lives, even if we do not manage to save Razikale.”

“The Wardens might not take it well,” cautioned Nesha. “I mean, do we even need Wardens, if this works?”

“On the contrary; when I was at Weisshaupt, we were discussing deploying the raw BRF in the case of a Blight or outbreak. A real inoculation is better. Wardens are still needed to sense darkspawn and bind archdemons. This way, though, we’d only need one or two per squad, and the rest would be auxiliaries, probably enlisted for terms of a few years, and we could have several times the manpower without half so much the danger of Joining people and them being our responsibility for the rest of their lives. Especially if the Calling does get pushed back to fifty years or more; they won’t want to pay that many full pensions.” That particular crisis would hit in about ten years, most likely. “What else, though,” Surana continued. “The Legion of the Dead. They lose as many to the Taint as to actual injuries. If both of you get out of this, one of you should go to Orzammar and present it to the Assembly. The inoculation is entirely alchemical, so Orzammar can make it.”

“What about the recruitment pool for real Wardens?” asked Nesha, thoughtfully.

“Train the auxiliaries and recruits as one, and don’t give the inoculation until they’ve turned down the Joining. Mess with the incentives enough that about ten to fifteen percent of recruits still take the Joining. Simple as that.”

“Anyway, I believe we still have a matter of a hole and a dragon?” said Arainai. “And ignore how that sounded. We are not fucking the dragon.”

“Why are we discussing fucking dragons?” asked the Architect, shocked and puzzled.

“In Orlesian, ‘hole’ is often a euphemism for—”

“And you have the mind of a whore,” finished the Architect.

“You know, I believe you do not even know just how offensive that statement is. I think I will not even try to tell you.”

“In all seriousness, how far have you gotten with the…mineshaft?” asked Nesha. Ancestors, that actually sounded worse.

“About eight feet,” admitted Surana.

“Cutting the way into the cave?”

“No, that was already there. We pretty much just got here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...At this point, when I'm having trouble making wordcount I just start blabbing about meta to make up for it. Some of you like that, I'm sure, but I feel like I'm cheating.


	34. (In)Facilis Descensus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rock is almost too easy to work. The Architect has his Tainted underthings in a twist. Alim has suspicions on what the First Breach really did to the Veil. Razikale makes things weird.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter updates are going to be on Fridays now. I think that will work better with getting them done. August kicked my butt for a number of reasons, but I think updates will resume regularity from now on, and this should be done by the end of October, maybe early November, still.

It was really quite unfortunate that none of their number had the gift of thought-sending. That was the Watchman’s thing. Instead, Frigor and a few Awakened warriors and runners observed the horde, and sent updates every so often. The horde was a little close to Razikale for comfort.

Most of the Frostback basin was limestone. It was quite soft, as rocks go, and both the darkspawn and the dwarves made good progress. The Deep Roads causeway was built of harder, imported rock, but limestone beyond. According to the miners, likely the ancient dwarves had had a road-sized rectangular metal tunnel on wheels, and had used that to support the tunnel as it was carved out, gradually moving it forward as the rest was finished.

The modern team did not have such a metal tunnel, so the larger lyrium explosives were too dangerous for this rock; the smaller ones, initially intended for as they got nearer the dragon, soon ran out. Fortunately, they had mages. The dwarves drilled long holes into the stone, and then the mages filled them with ice until the rock cracked. Then the dwarves cleared out the cracked rock with shovels and picks. They camped on the dwarven causeway; the darkspawn had tents to maintain the pretense of mortality (Nesha had sent them in advance), and pitched them a quarter mile away from the miners’ camp, so no one would see them too closely.

So far, the main issue was preventing mass panic among the miners. They were surfacers, and so they had never actually seen a case of the Blight. Thus, they…misinterpreted the symptoms of the serum just _working_.

Not that Elgara had not been afraid on that point as well. The least contamination, and the serum would be worse than useless. When one of the dwarves claimed that his arm was turning black, her heart leapt into her mouth.

“That’s just injection site bruising,” she said with relief, shortly after. “It happens sometimes, when you stick needles into people.”

“But it’s swollen, too, and it hurts!”

“Actually, that’s why I can tell. Your arm is swollen and hot. Blighted wounds turn cold, especially small ones. The infected area has reduced sensation and only itches around the edges. While corruption can initially look bruise-like, it spreads rapidly and becomes raised, rough, and dry in a matter of hours. You had the shot two days ago. If you had the Blight, it would have covered most of your upper arm and there would be veins of it going down to your hand and face and across your back, and you would be too sick to walk or else completely out of your head, depending.”

She had the same conversation with five other dwarves, and then that afternoon they just all collectively complained that their arms were sore. Elgara and Alim made the decision to call a rest day (over the Architect’s protests). Elfroot salve was distributed.

“We should still get there in plenty of time,” said Alim. “The horde does not know how to freeze and break stone, and most of them don’t have real picks. Besides, what’s to stop us from continuing, without the dwarves?”

Freeze, hammer with Force, shovel. Repeat. And repeat. And repeat.

“If I cast any more, I will drop,” complained Elgara, hours later. These were not exactly easy spells (more the magnitude than the complexity), nor were they her main school of magic.

“Already?” asked the Architect.

“No sense giving ourselves magic burn,” said Alim. “Yeah, we have blight magic, but we’re still casting faster than we’re replenishing. Besides, Elgara and Nesha need food.”

“Yes. That would be good. I wonder if the dwarves have any?” The Wardens headed up the tunnel in the direction of the causeway, pulling a last handcart of rubble as they went. For some reason, the darkspawn did not really feel the urge to resume digging, Razikale notwithstanding. The call was still there, but the rest of their minds needed a break.

Alim sat down on the tunnel floor, picking up chips of limestone and throwing them at the opposite wall. “Yes, yes, we’ll get back to you in a few minutes, don’t worry,” he said to the dragon in his head.

“Who are you talking to?” asked the Architect.

“Right. You can’t hear. Razikale is deafening, at this distance. Like some cat out in a rainstorm that wants to be let in, and is pissed that you haven’t opened the door yet.”

“I have never had a pet cat. There were some at the various estates for vermin, but they were the servants’ responsibility.”

“Well, then, just suffice to say that she’s loud and wants us to let her out of where she is. I’m honestly not sure if she’s awake or not, or somewhere in between, but she can’t get out unless we let her out. Like there’s some kind of binding. Not in so many words, but a general sense.”

“I am just getting a general sense of ‘dig towards me,’” said Zevran.

“He has the power of being able to understand the song in much more detail than most,” said the Architect.

“I am aware of that. I am simply telling you how I am affected by the situation, no? And at least I can hear it at all, hmm?”

“I consider it a virtue to be able to escape its influence.”

Incaensor and Mandrake, sensing the start of an argument, began to creep up the tunnel.

“And the rest of us are hardly mindless beings digging artlessly through compulsion. Look; Alim and I sit here, despite hearing the dragon’s call—and it is still louder than normal, right now, even for me. Your ‘virtue’ would not have found the dragon on your own, would it, no?”

“All the dragons are at the intersections of ley lines. Those have been plotted since before I was born. Not to mention I do feel a slight pull, at this range, as one feels a deep sound through the body.”

“Yet there are records of you kidnapping Wardens to find the locations, no?” asked Zevran.

“I had lost my memories, at the time. They later returned, quite naturally. I would have found the dragons regardless.”

“Quit it, both of you. You’re too loud.”

“You should have better control. A seer without it is dangerous.”

“I don’t think he does _that_ with spirits,” said Zevran, puzzled.

“No, he means the scrying. Detecting stuff, seeing through things, peeking into the Near Fade. I’m told that once I could have been trained to actually prophesy the future, with the help of spirits, but a certain group of people plunged the world into chaos and also probably fucked up the resonance of the Veil and made magic harder for almost everyone.”

“The Veil was the same afterwards as it was before, except in the immediate area!”

“Then why have so few Dreamers been born since the First Breach?”

“A mere loss of technique, in the completely unintentional upheaval in the wake of the unfortunate complications of Tevinter’s greatest achievement.”

“I’m sure some of the old Dreamers were taught it, but it was—is—possible for that to be a natural talent. There was one, and only one, in my lifetime, out of how many mages in the world? From Kirkwall, your Emerius, ironically enough. If the Veil were not so thin, there, I doubt he would have been. I went there once, and there was barely anything between me and the Fade, less a Veil but more like someone had hastily and badly darned a sock. Then oddly thick, once one got far enough outside the city that no one’s habitation wore at the Veil.”

“I will grant that Dreamers are more likely to be born where the Veil is thin, to the point that the wives of the Alti would go to cities when pregnant, despite the air of the country being much more healthy, but what has this got to do with anything?”

“When you breached they Veil…I do not know the magic involved, but I know the Veil itself well enough to know you must have worn it threadbare, picked an already thin spot and worn it thinner, stretched it taught with death and workings, and then cut it with a magical force I can barely imagine. Stretch a knit cloth and cut it like that and it bounces back, curling. Much the same with the rifts of the Second Breach, though all the ones I got near were much smaller and the effect only lasted a few hundred feet, but that time the Anchor could close them properly. You Seven did not have that, and you barely closed the door behind you—not that I particularly blame you for not doing more. Even with blood and lyrium and the raw Fade, that would have been exhausting, and you’d all caught the Blight, apparently. But what happened, I think, is that your tear in the Veil altered its natural tension, and made it thicker or less clear everywhere else. Warped it; everything skewing from where it had been. Muddied its resonance; cracked its reed…that thing with a tuning fork or a bell where if you grab it tightly it goes tinny and stops short. Of course it’s been nearly thirteen hundred years since, so people being people and all their emotions and eventual deaths have worn new ‘wear spots’ on the metaphorical sock, but still, quite a lot of the damage persists, if half the legends of what Tevinter used to be are true, compared to what it is this century. It at least should have caught up again, by now, despite the Qunari or even spurred on by them, since magic has never been really restricted there, if it were at all possible to do so.”

“Did you just compare the Veil to a sock?” asked the Architect.

“Yes, I did. It’s a good metaphor. Or, I don’t know, maybe magisters never wore any pair of socks long enough to get actual holes in them. But in any case, if I’m not trained up to your standards, that’s your fault.”

“Of all the juvenile and preposterous—”

“Doubly so, because you’re the official reason mages were restricted in half of Thedas for so long. Not that I’d have fared much better in Tevinter, being an elf. Oh, and then I’ve spent how long with you, and you haven’t taken issue with my scrying or taught me anything about ‘controlling’ it until suddenly it annoys you that I can hear a dragon better than you?”

“I taught you how to do water scrying!”

“Completely different, and you know it.” Also the Madman had actually been more help, but he had pushed quite enough.

“Please save the fight for after we save the dragon, yes?” asked Zevran, a bit panicked. He could feel both of them gathering their magic, the way the air seemed to shift a little, and they were in much too small a space for that. Granted, the magic-gathering was probably unconscious habit and unlikely to be used for anything, but all the same.

“All right,” said the Architect. “I am still worried about Razikale’s influence over you,” he said, turning to Alim. “And now where have those Wardens got to? Surely they must have eaten sufficiently by now.” He stalked towards the upper end of the tunnel dramatically—at least, insofar as it is possible for one to do while slipping on loose rock shards every few steps and covered in limestone dust.

“I can’t exactly turn it off,” said Alim, once the Architect was out of sight. “I’m not doing anything to hear it. I can listen more closely or not, but that’s it. I’m a certain kind of mage, so I just sense it without any effort on my part. Technically I could stop it, but only by taking magebane or having someone cast an anti-magic spell on me.”

“We should probably follow him,” said Zevran, not having a reply to the magical theory. “The mortals are supposed to think that you are in charge, and he is likely to insult them in three different ways as soon as he opens his mouth, in that mood.”

“Yes, we should.” Alim pulled himself to his feet and set off up the tunnel, cursing the limestone scree under his feet every few breaths.

 

They found the Architect cornered by a rather expansive dwarf—emotionally expansive, primarily, but a little physically expansive in addition. The Architect seemed almost panicked at having encountered someone with very little concept of personal space. Alim stepped in.

“You there. What’s your name again—Jensen? Janson?”

“Jensen, ser. As I was explaining to your colleague, there, I’ve modified the bigger lyrium explosives to be smaller. You don’t have to keep freezing the stone now!” The man’s accent turned all the unstressed vowels into “ih” and smeared half the words together.

“So does that mean we have twice as many?” Out of the corner of his eye, Alim saw that the Architect had escaped to parts unknown.

“Nah, same number, unless we can get more fuses. Well, minus two where I fucked up the fuses, figuring it out. That’s the limiting factor, fuses.”

“What about the extra—”

“The extra lyrium won’t explode. It’s stored safely. Doubt we’ll have time to get more fuses before the job is over, though.”

“What are the fuses made of?”

“Ahdunno. You just order them from one of the mining supply companies. They come in bundles of a hundred. But they just come with the lyrium explosives if you order them.”

“Let me take a look,” said Zevran. “Perhaps I will be able to figure out how to replicate them, no?”

“Zev, you don’t know anything about explosives!” hissed Alim—whisper-hissed, not actual hissing.

“I do too! A little! And fuses are ropes, and I know ropes.” Alim could have sworn he saw a wink from under the robes they wore to hide their forms from the miners.

“Well, if you can get them to burn at a controlled rate at the right thickness, come see me,” said Jensen, bowing slightly and taking his leave.

“Don’t tell me you need another session,” said Alim to Zevran, after Jensen left.

“What?”

“You winked…never mind.”

“Oh. Just trying to emphasize that it was a dirty joke. I do so love those, you know.”

“I suppose I should have known.”

“You sound a bit too relieved saying that. Surely you haven’t had a change of heart toward the Architect, no?”

“Of course not! Just, you know…mining operation, rescuing a dragon, tons of people around. No time, and I’m the kind of nervous I’m not sure I could. Afterwards, I promise I’ll ravish you as long and hard as you like.” He still sounded a touch distracted.

“Are you all right?”

“It’s really happening. All this time as an abstract, as labwork. Thirteen years of being dead—well, undead—and then suddenly everything I thought was just a bunch of talking darkspawn’s fantasies is actually taking place. And there’s a damned dragon in my head that won’t shut up.”

“And I thought the Calling was bad,” laughed Zevran.

“May I remind you that it _is_ the Calling. Part of it. I’d just gotten used to the normal part. Now I’m just standing right in front of the scaly hurdy-gurdy. It’s giving me a headache.”

 

The next few days went fairly smoothly, all things considered. Lyrium sand was much more explosive than ice, making it much easier to get the pieces out. There were now nearly two miles of tunnel, braced with wood.

The dragon’s call grew stronger. Alim suffered in silence, but Mandrake did not have nearly that level of endurance. The peace was eventually shattered by him having a screaming tantrum on the tunnel floor.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry; he’s just a bit addled,” Alim reassured the miners, plastering a grin on his face out of years of political reflex, even though he was quite sure his face was entirely hidden by his hood. At least, he hoped it was; he did not want to think about what the miners might guess if they saw how sharp his teeth were. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly. Just gets claustrophobic sometimes. I’ll get him out of here and give him his medicine. Zev, a little help?”

They brought Mandrake back to the causeway—he stopped screaming and started actually walking about halfway there. “What are we going to do?” asked Zevran.

“We need something like magebane, but which won’t actually stop him casting,” said Alim. “Shit, I could use it too. My head is killing me.”

“All right, so how do we do that? Deep mushroom, deathroot, felandaris, lyrium, and a standard corruptor agent, for magebane. I think we have four out of five in the kit—no felandaris. How do we change it, though?”

“Felandaris grows around here, or it did thirty years ago. We can check when it gets dark. What time is it, anyway?” Alim fumbled with his pocketwatch. Useful thing for a lab researcher, pocketwatches. “It’s spring, so it should be dark pretty soon. We can look for it.”

“Still, changing it so it is not actually magebane?”

“I’d start with leaving out the corruptor agent,” said Alim.

 

Some hours later, they had a rather large jar of a substance that was highly toxic to mortals but pleasantly analgesic to darkspawn. There was about twice as much of it as they had meant to make, but they had had to keep adding a little more of this and that as they tested it, until they ended up with quite a lot. But the end result dulled the dragonsong quite a lot, and casting only a little.

“I just wish we had red lyrium to make it with,” said Alim, staring at the jar of noxious liquid. “Then I could use it to specifically bind Blight magic reception with the felandaris. Filter out that kind, and keep the rest. We’d be slower, but no more than mortals. It kind of works to block the song now, but it would be so much better with that.” It was still more than possible to find wild red lyrium, in most relatively uninhabited places, but the local Avvar were quite proactive about destroying it. They used their “gods” to sniff it out, and then burnt it with a special spell much like a Seeker’s power.

Alim wondered what the Avvar would think if they knew what they were doing to the dragon sleeping beneath them. He was pretty sure the Avvar thought dragons were gods, too. They were not even particularly wrong.

 

Before they ran out of the new explosives, Alim’s scrying indicated that it was time to start digging by hand, and for the darkspawn to withdraw from the tunnel. (Elgara and Nesha sanitized it behind them, telling the miners it was magic.) With the new medicine, he could not be as precise in his scrying as he wished, at least not for several hours, but they were less than one hundred feet from the dragon’s chamber. By their calculations, they should be ahead of the horde.

A runner arrived later that day to confirm that they were indeed ahead, but not nearly as far as they were supposed to be.

“You’re saying the horde made a Neromenian screw?” Alim asked, not quite sure he had heard the description properly.

“That’s what the Madman said,” the runner said.

“What did it look like?” asked Zevran. What had been called a Neromenian screw thirteen hundred years ago might be something different from what was known by the same name today.

“It’s big and metal and twisty. It has a point that cuts into the rock, and then the horde walks on…things to turn it”—the runner made elliptical loops with one hand, apparently not knowing the words ‘treadmill’ or ‘conveyor belt’—“and it spits bits of rock out of the end of the twisty part.”

“Shit,” said Alim. “I didn’t think they were capable of that. Why aren’t we doing that.” He paused for a second. “How big is it? Like, the circle shape, where you look at the twisty part head-on, how wide is it at the widest part?”

“If all three of you lay head to feet, about that.”

“And that is why we are not doing that,” said Zevran. “Plus how hard it would be to transport such a drill.”

“You are right,” said the Architect. “They should not have been able to invent that, let alone make it on such a scale. Even though the rock is fairly soft, they still should not have been able to make metal strong and sharp enough for that, especially on that scale, and they should not know how to keep a passage that size stable. How are they even doing it, without wood? Possibly even more metal. I believe the Forgewright is interfering.”

“Wouldn’t the Madman know?”

“Whether the Forgewright is there? Not necessarily. I do not think she has ever had the opportunity to study the horde. I have. And the Forgewright has access to cloaking runes. He goes there, under that cover, and boosts the intelligence of the horde, designs a superior drill for them, and sets them to work—and perhaps he brings the Appraiser, to ensure cooperation.”

“Fuck. They’re trying to taint Razikale before we can get there. If they manage, the dragon has a path right to the surface and just has to make it bigger.”

“You need to sway the horde. I think you are strong enough, now. Go there, and take Zevran. I will remain here to oversee the main plan.”

“No, you go with him,” said Zevran. “I know more about the serum than you do, and I am also one of the former Wardens. Take the other emissaries with you, too. He will need the support. I will stay here as a legitimate authority.”

“There should be a mage overseeing this operation.”

“And that is what Du Loup is for, no? You know you cannot be anywhere near the dragon.”

The Architect looked for a moment as though he were about to fly into a temper at Zevran, for this, but the moment passed. “Well enough. I will go, and you will stay. But woe be it for you if you mess anything up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You thought they could just dig within a thousand feet of an Old God without consequences? You thought the other Magisters wouldn't interfere? Hahaha no.


	35. Turning and Turning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Forgewright is definitely involved. A miscommunication. Alim and the Madman are damaged at each other. A ritual is prepared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember, updates are on Fridays now!

The route back to the horde’s current location (which was not a straight or smooth path) was about ten miles. The darkspawn—Alim, the Architect, and the rest of the mages (plus Cuchillo, for melee backup)—reached  it in about three hours.

“Thank the gods you’re here,” said the Madman, coming out to meet them. Her words slurred a little; that would be the drugs Zevran had made for her to calm some of the broodmother hunger. She was still mobile, even after months more of denial, though her face was tensed in what seemed like pain, and Alim saw that the Taint in her was like an anthill used as a punching bag. “I do not know if the Forgewright is here or not. If he is, he is at a distance where I cannot detect him or his runes.” She looked over their party, now all out of the shadows. “Is Zevran here?”

“We had to leave someone behind to watch the mortals, and it could not be a mage,” answered the Architect.

“I see,” said the Madman, and the line of her mouth indicated words unsaid. She turned away, and Alim and the rest followed her to her camp.

The camp was set on a ledge overlooking the teeming mine below, where the great drill had bitten into a forgotten tunnel as it passed. And yes, that was indeed a Neromenian screw, turned by the march of a neverending stream of grey bodies, spitting chunks of limestone out of its fundament into a chute that fed a constant circular procession of rough carts pulled by Blighted brontos. Its bore was indeed taller than three of Alim, and its deepening spirals pulled the eye as its cutoff end eternally disappeared into the underground night—for the cavern where the horde worked was lit with so many torches that it looked like a corn field with fiery ears, and in comparison all beyond it was shadow even to Tainted eyes. And behind it a triple layer of treadmills on impossible frames, pulled forward by the force of the screw they turned, and a vast array of gears and axles that spun and coalesced in dizzying gyres until they all met against the central steel shaft of the great screw itself. Behind this terrible engine, more darkspawn, ogres among them, raced to brace up the ceiling with great beams of Alim knew not what; some kind of metal, he thought, for surely trees were not that big in such number (and they were underground), but any clanking that might have confirmed it was drowned out by the creak of machinery and the work-chants of the horde.

Alim finally tore his eyes away and turned to the Architect, who still stared at the swarming hive before them, an almost wistful expression on his face. Alim nudged him, and he stirred.

“It reminds me of some of the public works I used to supervise, before I became the high priest. After, of course, it was mostly paperwork and rituals. We rarely used drills—we were not dwarves, though I saw the building of a dwarven highway once—but that treadmill brings back memories.”

“So the Forgewright is here?”

“Oh, undoubtedly. Many of the design details are specific to Tevinter in my time—especially the treadmill. If that were not enough confirmation, while they do have a surprising number of broodmothers here, even that would not be enough to make the darkspawn capable of building and maintaining such a device.”

“Where?” asked Alim in alarm.

“There,” said the Architect, pointing.

Alim squinted, both magically and physically. What he had taken for spare carts ridden by darkspawn were, in fact, portable broodmothers. Broodmothers on carts, tentacles and all. How had they gotten broodmothers onto carts?

The Madman answered him, coming up next to him on the other side from where the Architect stood.

“They are newly turned, brought here shortly after you passed through, when the horde was still digging with picks. They brought women, many of them, and tied them to the carts while they changed, pulling them along as they dug. I did not have the numbers to interfere.”

“Nor should you have, even if you had. The Forgewright would have found you,” said the Architect, coldly.

“Do not speak to me about that.”

“That is all hypothetical now,” said Alim, smoothing down the tempers. “More importantly, where are they getting them? If it’s local, we might have Avvar jeopardizing our operation.”

“That is probably the intent,” said the Madman.

“The current priority is slowing or stopping the horde,” said the Architect. “Alim will sing them into stopping.”

“I need water first.” Darkspawn can run almost forever, but it steals water from the breath, and requires much more breathing besides; thus also with singing. “Blood would be better.”

“So be it,” said the Architect. “I will find you blood.”

He turned to leave, and turned back again. “Which way to where the rest of them are?” he asked the Madman.

“Half a mile in the obvious direction, then you will find the last camp, much the same as this one. There is a rope ladder to throw down. That way you will be behind the bulk of the horde.”

“Thank you,” said the Architect, and left. Alim told the apprentices to stay, and followed.

 

The cavern seemed even vaster from its floor. Alim tried not to stand out too much from the crowd, hoping to find an unhitched Blight-beast. Entropy magic prickled behind him, and turning he saw the Architect cast a hex at an ogre.

“The fuck are you doing?” Alim hissed.

“Getting you blood,” said the Architect, as if it were obvious.

“I thought you meant one of the brontos!”

“The ogre is bigger.”

“We can’t—that’s a person!”

“ _It_ is an ogre. You yourself have controlled them with blood, by your own admission.” And curse him for his ability to remember details, Alim thought.

“That was before….” Before he became a darkspawn himself. Before he knew darkspawn could talk. Before he knew what a broodmother was and where darkspawn came from. Before he had met a qunari with actual horns, even. (Sten had told him, once, that he had been chosen because he looked more human than most Qunari.)

“Before you even had a dragon to save,” scoffed the Architect. “We cannot afford to waste time. The ogre’s blood will be better for what you need.”

The ogre stood slack-jawed and arms hanging, dazed by the hex. The Architect strode up to it and, barely reaching its shoulders with its hands, pulled it down into a kneeling position. Taking his personal knife, he cut a sigil into the muscle of its chest—the hex must be preventing the ogre from feeling pain, Alim realized. The Architect wiped his knife on his robes, then dug around in his pockets and pulled out a lyrium potion. He poured a few drops into his hand, then smeared it on the wound.

“This is not as much lyrium as it should be, but the Blight magic and your song should ensure compliance with even this much,” he said.

Alim only stood there in uncertainty and slight horror. The other darkspawn had not noticed them, even with the use of magic and the…tattoo or whatever that was being carved into the ogre’s chest. He wondered if that was the Madman’s doing, or if they were simply so focused on Razikale He did not know the sigil the Architect was using and could not see the lines clearly for the blood, though he guessed what it must be for, though the basic magical mechanics of the process were quite clear. He also knew that this could not be the way it was supposed to be done, cut hurriedly with a knife and with a potion for ink. Doubtless, though, the end result would be an ogre with more of its brain intact than the one he had once thralled in Bownammar. That one had seized and collapsed as soon as Alim had let the spell go, blood and bits of brain seeping out its nose, until he had cut its throat as mercy. It had been the first and last time he had thralled anything. Even for a darkspawn—for what he had thought they were then—it was just too cruel.

The Architect pulled out his knife again. This time he cut himself, scooping up the blood from the cut and rubbing it into the sigil after the lyrium. His own blood, to tie the bond. Stepping back and pressing his own wound closed, still holding the knife, the Architect nodded to Alim.

“You too.”

Alim stood still.

“It will not obey you without your blood in the sigil. This will not hurt you, beyond the cut. This was a common binding in Tevinter, and I did it right, if a bit crudely.”

Alim still hesitated.

“You need it to obey you without your song. Do not resist me in this.” He held up the knife, and Alim knew that it was not stabbing that he was meant to fear.

Alim stepped forward, slowly, and pulled out his own spell knife, a crescent of obsidian. He stood in front of the ogre, raised the blade to his arm, and stopped.

“Alim—”

“Magically, I’m still a Grey Warden. How is that going to affect this?”

“It probably will not. It is almost certainly irrelevant to this kind of binding. And if it is not, I can hardly see any disadvantage to making the creature less able to hear Razikale.”

Black volcanic glass bit into pale grey skin. Black blood welled out, and Alim dipped his fingers in it, having flipped the crescent blade up so it lay along the back of his hand, feeling the familiar stinging under the effervescing potential magic. As if from behind a pane of glass, with only the pain of the cut connecting him to what he was doing, he rubbed the blood into the already-smeared wound on the ogre’s chest, feeling the faint tingling of lyrium under the pads of his fingers. The Architect cast, and Alim felt the magic draw a bit on the blood of all three of them, and then it was over.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the ogre.

Next to him, he felt the Architect drop the hexes on the ogre. It shook itself as if coming awake, but made no move to attack, flee, or warn other darkspawn.

“Follow,” the Architect commanded, then turned back towards the rope ladder. The ogre followed, and then, a moment later, Alim.

“What did you do?” Alim asked, after they reached the smaller tunnel at the top of the ladder.

“That was an Andoral Zenith sigil. It binds the recipient so fully that they can do almost nothing without direction. Normally it is a tattoo made with lyrium ink. It is usually only given to blood sacrifices and irredeemable criminals. Honestly, I am surprised I could still remember it. It was one of the essay questions on my final exam for…Intermediate Glyphs, I think. Or was it Advanced?” The Architect stopped walking and counted on his fingers for a moment. “No, Intermediate. Lesser variants of the sigil are much more common—binding speech only, for example.”

“Can it be undone?” Alim consciously willed himself not to touch his own vallaslin. Those were lyrium ink, too. Perhaps “servant of Dirthamen” was more literal than it appeared. If anyone could bind him with that…And he also had a sudden sinking suspicion about the origins of the thankfully-retired Rite of Tranquility.

“Of course,” said the Architect. “There had to be some procedure to reverse cases of wrongful binding, such as in certain kinds of assault or abduction, or subpoenas for testimony. It is rather more difficult than the binding itself, but definitely possible and not even terribly uncommon. I do not know the exact details, though. It was a closely guarded process, to try to prevent escaped slaves from doing it to themselves. Defacing or removing the sigil from the body does not itself accomplish it; I know that. Not that your ogre is likely to have to worry about any of that, once you’re through with it,” he added with a nod to Alim.

“I was just planning to drink blood, not cast with any that wasn’t my own,” said Alim, finally realizing the miscommunication.

“Are you an idiot? You saw the size of the horde. We do not have enough lyrium for that.”

“If you were doing it, maybe,” retorted Alim. The Architect muttered something under his breath, but let it pass.

 

The Madman greeted them upon their return.

“Just one?”

“He does not have the stomach for sacrificial bindings,” said the Architect, gesturing towards Alim.

“I come from a culture that does not condone slavery,” snapped Alim. Technically, that was true, since he had been born Dalish. Most human-run countries practiced some form of it in all but name. He suspected that it had more to do with being the group in power in a society large enough and with enough visibly different kinds of people to be able to have multiple underclasses than with any inherent characteristic of humans or elves.

“I’m sure you can get over your prejudices,” said the Architect.

“You should get another, even if he will not bind it.”

“It’s not the sort of spell that calls for great expenditure of mana. Concentration, yes. Constant mana drain, yes. But the amount of constant drain versus the number of targets is not linear. Honestly, I think it has more to do with the size of the area of projection and the complexity of the message. ‘Stop working’ is not a very complex message. It does not really matter what else they are doing, so long as they are not digging.”

“I am still not sure what you wanted with the ogre, if you did not mean to bind it,” said the Madman.

“I didn’t want an ogre. I wanted a Blighted bronto. Actually Blighted, not just cursing there. For drinking its blood. Which is I guess kind of for magic, but only secondarily. I wouldn’t mind binding a bronto. But an ogre? That could theoretically be Awakened and be a person. I think they’re all people; they just prefer not to talk, because they don’t need to. And they’ve mostly never had anyone actually talking to them.”

“Of course they are people,” said the Architect. “That has always been my position. They are slaves to the dragons, though, most often, and while I may choose to emancipate some who may be more useful that way, the rest will still be slave with or without any gods, and there is nothing wrong with binding or bleeding a slave, within reason.”

Alim decided it was time to change the subject, before the Magisters decided that he was essentially a slave as well, magic or no.

“I have blood to drink. I am going to drink it. Anyone who does not want to see me do that, out.” As he had hoped, both Magisters left the campsite and turned their backs. Quite understandable for the Madman—she was trying not to be reminded of her hunger—but it had always amused Alim that the Architect, with as many people as he had once killed for their blood and with his complete aplomb about binding people with blood, should have qualms about drinking it.

Alim looked at the ogre, estimating its height and weight. It was nearly twice his own size. Two quarts, he decided, would probably not hurt it overmuch, especially if he cast a regeneration spell first. Spell cast, he somewhat tentatively told it to sit.

“Sit,” he said again, more commandingly this time. The ogre looked at him attentively, but seemed confused. Did it even know what “sit” meant? He had been speaking Tevene. Alim tried again in Trade (most of the words occasionally yelled by unawakened darkspawn were Trade, for whatever reason), and this time the ogre sat. And thank the Maker; there was no way Alim could have reached any major vein that would not have been extremely awkward otherwise.

Alim located the jugular and bit. Fully Blighted blood flowed into his mouth. Not as potent as the Architect’s, but better than the bronto’s would have been, he had to admit. With the Taint in them, the living motes within the blood were close enough to his own vivicula that they could be assimilated right away, and finish their last changes at their destination. Warmth filled him at the influx of living liquid, and also the feeling of blood power, just waiting to be changed into magic. The fresh blood he drank would be enough for both.

All too soon, Alim felt his stomach grow waterlogged with blood. He withdrew his needle teeth and healed the wound shut. He looked around. Yes; the Madman’s camp did have a waterskin. Alim retrieved it and ordered the ogre to drink. When he received a look of incomprehension, he lifted it to the creature’s mouth and poured the water in, repeating the word. It seemed to get the idea.

“I’m done biting people!” called Alim to the others.

“Are you ready to begin?” asked the Architect.

“I think I need a few minutes to…settle first.” Alim still felt sloshy. “Why don’t you draw the glyphs for mana pooling and maybe something for sound amplification, if you know one?”

“Done.”

The Architect drew on the ground with lyrium chalk for several minutes. Then he straightened up, took a deep breath, and levitated off the sheared edge of the small tunnel.

“What are you doing?” asked Alim.

“I do know a sound amplification spell. It requires another glyph where the sound is projected to.” He sounded a bit shaky. “For the record, I really do not like hovering by magic at heights over fifteen feet.”

“You’d think being able to hover would make you less afraid of heights,” muttered Alim.

“He’s using Force,” said the Madman. “He probably has trouble controlling the spell if he goes much higher than that.”

“ _Force?_ I thought it was combined with Blight magic.”

“No, only Force. He did that before this happened to us. The spell is part of the standard liturgics of Urthemiel, in fact. Probably the only freestanding magic he’s good at. The Cult of Urthemiel was always full of pretty Force mages who were useless at any of the higher schools of magic. Almost every natural Dreamer who goes into public service chooses something else.”

“He’s good at glyphs.”

“ _Dwarves_ can be good at glyphs, if they know the lines and have a fairly steady hand. Any child with the slightest bit of magic can activate most of them, once drawn. Probably why Corypheus sought him out, though; anyone who wanted to do what we did would need a very large, unique glyph. Or he wanted a catamite. The Architect was letting Corypheus bend him over, you know?”

“…Interesting.” Alim was not about to give her any more ammunition than that, or make known his own very positive opinions on getting bent. Not now. It was time to change the subject. “Are the drugs Zevran made for you working, by the way? Forgive me, but I cannot help but notice that the Taint has gotten very…odd in you.”

“I do not doubt it. I can manage for a few more weeks, though, and that is all we need. Thank you for having the sense not to ask why I do not simply ask the Architect to control it.”

“I was under the impression that he had tried that before and that the results were less than satisfactory.”

“That is one way of putting it.”

“The Augur said something in passing once. Between that and him being him, I can guess some of what he must have done to you.”

“I can’t even talk about it. And as a woman of my station? I was supposed to not have to worry about anything even remotely like that!”

“It’s not so much better to live constantly expecting such violence, you know. Then you can’t even have the consolation of putting a finger on any specific person or act, when the panic and nightmares come.”

“And you’d know?”

“I was pretty once. Ask Zevran; I was just twenty when I met him. I doubt you were too cloistered to know how people act toward pretty elven boys.”

“Are you saying I had it better?”

“Obviously not. I wasn’t vivisected. I wasn’t even raped; I had a reputation for fighting with fists, not magic, even before I got pretty, so they only touched the children who were harmless with their magic gone. It did not stop the comments or the stares or the looks or the ‘accidental’ intrusions when I was bathing or on the privy. Right up until the day I became _this_ and lost the ability to sleep, I dreamed about what if they had actually caught me. Again, ask Zevran, if you doubt me.”

“I don’t doubt you had nightmares. But can you do anything for my condition?”

“Unfortunately, not with magic if I am supposed to be singing.” Alim glanced at the Architect hovering across the cavern to guess how much time he had; the Architect was halfway through his third glyph. The way he had positioned them, he doubted he would need a fourth. Alim spoke quickly. “So my first idea is to add contraceptive herbs to the tonic—it’s mostly a sedative and an appetite suppressant at the moment. Trying to counter the root cause would be better, since the palliatives seem to be failing and starting to make you sicker. Well, counter what I suspect is the root cause, or one of. It may not work, because you’re not human, but it’s worth trying. I’ll calculate the dosage later. Or get Zevran to, since he made the tonic in the first place. I will likely be too exhausted after this to do much.”

In front of them, the Architect finished the last projection glyph and hovered back towards the ledge.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

Carefully, all the mages stepped into the chain of mana-sharing glyphs. The design was such that there were blank spaces within the glyphs in which to put one’s feet, so that the lines would not be rubbed out. Alim stood closest to the edge, at the funneling point; the Architect, directly behind him, to shape the secondary ritual. Everyone else was behind the Architect. Craning his neck to check the formation, Alim saw that the Madman was in the very rear. Cuchillo and the Madman’s guards kept watch.

Seven to fix what Seven had started. Alim nodded, and when he felt the others’ magic swell behind him, he opened his mouth and began to sing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They're all awful people who have also been through awful shit. This is usually how it works in the real world. Kind of a trip to write, too.
> 
> Obviously, it's actually an Archimedes screw, but Archimedes does not exist in this universe, more's the pity.
> 
> Yeah, the Architect totally vivsected her. This comes up more in something I haven't written yet. Also, god the timelines. Especially since Corypheus gets locked up only a couple hundred years in....
> 
> To be precise, the seven mages are 1) Alim, 2) The Architect, 3) Spiders, 4) Frigor, 5) Mandrake, 6) Incaensor, and 7) The Madman. The formation is:  
> 5_  
> __>3  
> 6___>2__1  
> __>4  
> 7  
> but more of an actual pyramid. I should have just inserted a picture, but then I'd have to draw one.


	36. The Crux of the Matter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alim tests his voice against the Horde. Elgara sticks needles in a giant dragon. The moment everyone has waited and planned for. What comes after?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I do have a plan for what comes after--it's the rest of this fic. The start of it will go on Patreon in a few hours, once I'm done writing the chapter draft. Decided to post to AO3 and tumblr, at least, while it was still a sensible hour.)

It was simple and wordless, and it echoed around the cavern. With three output glyphs, it was as if there were four of Alim singing.

Of course, the magic only came from one. Even the heights of ancient Tevene graphomancy had never figured out how to transmit the casting of an independent spell from one place to another, or how to map anything remotely like what Alim was casting in lyrium ink, and that was probably for the best. Even the sound was not really being transmitted per se. Sound was nothing more than vibrations, and the glyphs merely registered those tiny movements and pressures and replicated them artificially with magic.

Sound alone was not magic, at least not the kind of magic that any corporeal being could reproduce. Sound has its own powers, but they are not the same thing as magic, even if occasionally mistaken for such, or vice versa. The hum of lyrium or the strident Calling of an Old God, as they are described, are the mind’s efforts to make sense of magical sensation, with the part of every thing’s being that is made of Fade, or Void. Audible sound is a mirror to some magic, and a warped one. But, mirroring magic or on its own, sound is a great distraction, and both its simple distraction and reflection of magic increases the mind’s susceptibility to that magic. The sound now pouring down startled the darkspawn, clearly recognizable as imitation of its real counterpart, as one can recognize from someone’s whistling the first bars of a fully orchestral iconic symphony.

Without sound, Alim might have reached a few dozen of the nearest darkspawn, until they got bored of listening to him and went back to listening to the louder song of the sleeping dragon. With sound, his competing magic caused mayhem. The treadmill slowed, and the drill slowed with it, as darkspawn tripped over each other and fell off the backs of the conveyor belts. Several carts crashed into each other, blocking a full one against the exit chute, and it began to back up. Meanwhile, the broodmothers, most of whom had barely been broodmothers long enough to have finished the changes, either raged at the interruption to what they had been listening to, or since the clash of two magics meant that neither was predominant, reasserted independent thought and flipped out. Broodmothers are natural amplifiers for the Calling; with their listening disrupted, Alim’s counter-Calling became that much stronger. The drill slowed further; more carts stalled or tipped and spilled limestone chunks on the floor; the center level of the treadmill became fully jammed as a Hurlock got caught in the rollers; ogres and brontos ran in circles. Neither voice reigned, just voiceless uncertainty.

With any luck, the drill would jam soon, or the rest of the treadmills. Doubtless the darkspawn would eventually get it going again, but even a few hours’ delay might be enough. Then Alim would do it again. Even if the darkspawn eventually decided to work without the drill, even if they could somehow destroy it permanently, it would take them a great deal of time to get it out so they could work around it.

The odd thing that was some of the darkspawn seemed totally unaffected. The lowest and biggest treadmill in the stack still churned on without hesitation, grey bodies marching with all the precision and uniformity of Orlesian chevaliers. Others began trying to manually clear out the limestone debris from the drill. Had the Forgewright Awakened them? Did the Last Moon have anyone with the clearance to know how? Even as he pondered these questions, Alim kept singing.

Someone screamed behind him, and then the screaming was muffled by some kind of shield. Alim looked back, but could not see what exactly had happened.

“Keep singing,” hissed the Architect, so Alim did.

A spooked bronto with an empty cart eventually ran through the lowest treadmill, sweeping darkspawn off of it and toppling the entire array. It hit the curved wall, and then the middle of it kept going into the curve, with the screech of wrenched metal and breaking machinery. The drill stopped. Alim signaled; the incoming stream of mana died, and he let the song drop.

“Can I have some water, please,” he asked, feeling suddenly dizzy. He managed to step out of the glyph without smudging it, and sat down. He took the waterskin offered to him and drank deeply, remembering only after he came up for air that it was probably the same one the ogre had drunk from. Ugh. Then he remembered that he had drunk the ogre’s blood, and supposed he was being silly. He re-corked the waterskin and looked around. “Why is Cuchillo in a shield bubble?”

“He tried to stab you,” said the Madman. “You’re welcome.”

“He…what?”

“The Appraiser may be here,” said the Architect. “Some of the darkspawn were unaffected by you, at all. Others chose the dragon, but they still seemed to hear you and take notice for a moment before turning away. A certain number did not so much as start or falter. That number seems a reasonable estimate of how many the Appraiser could control without prior preparation or notice.”

“And Cuchillo’s the only one who isn’t a mage who has been re-Joined after Awakening. We mages would all resist too well, not to mention that we could have had something going on that would turn very nasty if disrupted—why didn’t we set traps like that? We should have—and the Awakened-only mundanes are probably immune to that kind of Blight magic, or harder to get at. And the Appraiser was already controlling a large number of targets.”

“Should I let him out?” asked the Madman.

“Let me get up first,” said Alim, clambering to his feet. “And dispel it, don’t just drop it.” That would cancel any other magic that might still be affecting Cuchillo.

The bubble flickered out, and Cuchillo’s form sharpened on the floor, crying.

“Hey. It’s okay. What happened?”

“I don’t know!”

“You tried to stab me. Why?”

“I didn’t want to! It just happened. I didn’t mean to.”

“That does sound like the Appraiser,” said the Architect.

“If they are both here, where is the Watchman?” asked the Madman.

“Probably trying to put a bomb in Weisshaupt fortress, if he’s smart. Not that he’d have to be there for that. I don’t know.”

“Please be serious.”

“Who said I wasn’t? If I led the Last Moon and wanted to create an eternal Blight, I would recruit operatives in every major or administrative Warden facility, and I would have them blow them all to smithereens right about now. They’ve gotten their hands on gaatlok before. Weisshaupt, Val Royeaux, Serault, Halamshiral—particularly Halamshiral, it’s closest to here and has one of the largest garrisons and just one giant dormitory building—Montsimmard, Soldier’s Peak, and Vigil’s Keep. Those would be the ones you’d want to take out first, unless a lot has changed in fifteen years. And I probably shouldn’t have shared that.”

“Neither of us wants to destroy the Grey Wardens. Eventually they will obviate themselves. The Madman wishes the Blight gone entirely, and I wish for the Tainted to have the Deep Roads and for the rest to have the surface. Of course, the dwarves keep rejecting such expediency.”

“You of all people can hardly ask them to give up tradition.”

“True. But they used to go to the surface readily enough. Cities underground were mostly old growth, and the lower classes sprawled out to the surface around every major thaig. I am surprised any of them try to live underground still, given the trouble. Carrying water in buckets from a well may be traditional, but even so, most people jump at the chance to have running water.”

“Orzammar’s got a law that anyone who goes to the surface loses citizenship and property. I don’t suppose you’d have known. I wonder if it was enacted to keep the city inhabited after the Blights started, because you’re right, people would have fled. Kal-Sharok has something similar, but it does have permits for merchants to leave and come back. I guess they realized that would keep down the Carta.”

“What do we do about those three, though?” asked the Madman.

“It will take them the better part of a day to clean up this mess,” said the Architect. “That should buy us the time we need. We should return to the mortals.”

“Yes, you should,” said the Madman.

“What about you?” asked Alim. “They’ll know you’re here now.”

“They won’t know that I, specifically, am here. If anything, they will think Corypheus is here, back somehow, after that performance. No one wants to duel with Corypheus—not even when he was mortal. He was Dumat’s. Even if you won, you didn’t win. Go. Send Zevran here, maybe. Actually, just send a runner with a new potion. I will tell you if they get the drill started again.”

“Are you sure?”

“I can make myself invisible—did you forget? Now _go_.”

 

There was no real warning before the miners’ drill went wild, jerking and spinning twice as fast against empty air. The miners stopped pedaling at once, and the drill stopped a few moments later. Elgara feared that they had injured the dragon that must be on the other side—they were at the right spot—but no blood came out of the borehole and the earth remained still. Once the miners had unscrewed the drill from the rock, she peered into it. The air coming through smelled horrible. She could see nothing, and realized that this should not have been particularly surprising. She sent a purple spellwisp through the hand-sized hole. Was that a glint of scales? She could not say.

The miners had already moved the drill a few inches to the side of the first hole, and were asking her to move so they could start again. That was what they did; honeycomb the stone so that she could fill the holes with ice and shatter it. Elgara stepped back and let them, heart hammering with anticipation. What did an uncorrupted Archdemon look like? Was it really uncorrupted? What if it was already infected, and not the darkspawn’s touch but the waking that started it? No, she thought she would know, in that case.

Her magic would not be needed for another hour at least, barring accidents. It was time to get The Chest.

She found Nesha chatting with Zevran, in his camp at the causway, and shouted the news in her general direction. Then she went back down the tunnel to her own camp. As the tunnel had gotten longer and it had become necessary to keep any trace of the Blight out of the immediate area of the digging, the mortals had dug out a second campsite, on Elgara’s direction, with a ‘clean’ entrance on the dragon side and a ‘contaminated’ entrance on the causeway side, with a one-way exit gate in between. Elgara had set up a station for a makeshift decontamination protocol on the causeway side, and she used it now. First, she checked that there were a couple towels and a change of clothes each for herself and Nesha in the travel autoclave. Then, a bath. They had brought a portable livestock trough, essentially a giant sack of waxed leather on a folding steel frame, and Elgara summoned water into it and then poured in a measure-ful of powdered disinfectant and soap. She stepped in and submerged herself completely, counting to thirty before coming up, gasping for breath around the disinfectant fumes, and repeating the process.

She got out and dripped over to the autoclave, pulling out one of the towels. Her fingers crawled at the touch of residual entropy magic, but at least it was warm. At a safe distance, Nesha was stripping out of her own clothes.

“Can you put some clothes in the autoclave for me?” called Nesha, from the bath.

“Already did!” Dressed, now, if still a little damp, Elgara prepared another bucket of disinfectant and wiped down two large jugs and a small, wheeled trunk she had gotten out of their tent at the same time as she had gotten the clothes. She would not open the trunk until they approached the dragon, since its contents were already sterilized, but she knew its contents by heart: Three very large syringes (they only needed one, but they were breakable), several gum-stoppered pint bottles for collecting unBlighted Archdemon blood (it would be inestimably valuable both monetarily and magically), a large number of diamond-tipped hollow needles, lyrium chalk, and a pouch full of runes with sleep spells keyed to dragons and a stick of gum adhesive. The jugs were the serum. The brown glass was etched with a sigil against breakage, and the etching filled with something that had lyrium in it, from the feel, and then lacquered over.

Nesha was dressed now. She picked up the jugs, as Elgara finished wiping them. Elgara stood, taking the chest’s pull-handle in one hand and the bucket of disinfectant with the rag in it in the other. She nodded at Nesha—only nodded; it felt as if speaking would somehow cause some disaster—and they set off down the tunnel.

The miners had finished with the drillwork and, lacking Elgara, had taken picks to the rock. She helped finish clearing a wide enough opening to step through, then stepped into the chamber.

The place’s magic hit her, and it was all she could do not to turn and run until she was out of the Frostback Basin entirely. At the same time, the dragon’s call was suddenly many times louder than before, a sound that did not touch her ears, and for a moment she was seized with a compulsion to…worship it. Elgara shook off the dual compulsions and realized that she had fallen to her hands and knees. The bucket of disinfectant had landed upright, somehow; she could not remember if she had dropped it or set it down. She stood and dusted herself off, yelling “I’m alright!” to those behind her.

Nesha was the next across the threshold. It seemed there was some kind of magical boundary about there, some restriction on the dragon’s powers; as soon as Nesha crossed, she clapped her hands to her ears and exclaimed “Stone’s ears, the fuck is that noise?”

Elgara had been hearing the dragon for days, as close as they had been, though she had not told Nesha or anyone about it. She had not wanted them to worry. Nesha apparently had not been able to hear it at all, or at least not distinctly enough to recognize the louder version. It must be because Nesha was a dwarf, or because she was a mage. Nesha took her hands off her ears, apparently having realized that the noise was not actual sound. Elgara lit several purple spellwisps and sent them to the ceiling, and the room was revealed.

That was a dragon. That was a very large dragon. It—she—slept, filling most of the gigantic cavern, her stomach taking more than a minute to rise and fall with each breath. It took five whole breaths before the Wardens could tear themselves away from the sight. How was the air in here kept fresh? Magic. Magic beyond what any mortal or Tainted being living still knew. Its scales glinted like metal; they might have been gold in sunlight—but they were streaked with dirt and filth. The dragon wore no visible chains, but it was obvious that she was a prisoner. Elgara felt a strange sense of shared experience…no, she would not think about that. Dragons like this were imprisoned for good reason, and it was only for a better reason that she was doing this at all. A creature with this much power and control over others’ minds even when hibernating could only ever be a danger. ( _People say that about mages too_ , a thought whispered in her mind, but even the stories of ancient Dreamers were not on this scale.)

Elgara popped the chest’s clasps open and pulled out the rune pouch, and began sticking the runes to the walls, as best she could. The walls were covered with filth, and the floor was caked with it—perhaps the dragon had taken some time to go into hibernation after her imprisonment, however many millennia ago that was—so footing was difficult, and often she had to position the runes a little differently from how she would want them. Not that it mattered, probably. This was a being made of the most concentrated magic in existence; probably any sleep spell that anyone today knew would have about the same effect as a mug of warm milk. Still, it might make the difference between waking or not when they stuck it with needles. Better to be on the safe side.

Returning to the chest, she cleaned her hands with the disinfectant, and then carried the pail over to the dragon. Her ‘underarm’ was exposed, where Elgara could just barely reach it; there would be a vein there. Elgara cleaned the area liberally. Then she retrieved the first syringe, bit her lip, and stuck a needle into a giant, semi-divine dragon.

She did not appear to even notice. Elgara stage-whispered to Nesha to wash her hands and bring her one of the bottles. (On the physical plane, the chamber was deathly quiet, and the Wardens and the miners both wanted it to stay that way.) Hands shaking, save when she was touching the dragon itself, she filled bottle after bottle with fresh blood and cast the standard phylactery spells. The bottles glowed so brightly that they were painful to look at. For fear it would wake the dragon, she hid them away in their padded compartments in the chest as fast as possible.

All the bottles were full and secured; time for the serum. Elgara changed syringes to have a fresh one for the serum; between the nervousness and the low light, she pricked herself on the used one’s needle as she put it away. She yelped, and both Wardens froze, holding their breaths and listening for any sound or movement from Razikale. A long minute passed without her stirring. Elgara picked up the fresh syringe, and Nesha carried the jugs of serum to the dragon’s side.

The serum jugs for the dragon did not have Rivain-gum seals, unlike the smaller one they had been given for the miners. The darkspawn had simply decanted the serum into sterilized jars, corked them with sterilized corks, and poured hot wax over the corks to complete the seal. It was not ideal, but it did not matter; all of this would go into Razikale at once. Elgara slid the needle into the dragon’s bicep where two scales met, pulled the plunger to check that she had not hit a vein, and then pushed it home. It was a lot of fluid. This size of syringe was normally only used for enemas, and getting needles made for it had been an adventure in itself. Elgara counted her own breaths as the plunger slowly slid home, and then carefully pulled the needle out, healing as she went to prevent the fluid from leaking out. Only six or maybe seven more injections to go!

By the time it was done, Elgara barely had the composure left to put her equipment away. She had had to change needles twice during the serum injections, though none of them had broken, and she had had to choose and clean two other intramuscular injection sites on the dragon’s body. Even if the creature was the size of a city block—one of the new-construction ones—injecting more than a gallon of fluid into any area was probably not a good idea. Elgara also hoped that having the injection sites spaced out would help the dragon build immunity faster.

It was time to go. Elgara stepped over the threshold of Razikale’s chamber, hearing the dragon’s Calling suddenly drop to almost nothing—a relief, yet she missed it at once all the same—and plodded up to the camp, pulling the chest full of precious untainted Archdemon blood behind her. She made it there, then flopped onto her bedroll, not caring that her clothes were covered with dragon manure. It was horrifically dangerous to stay here at all, she knew, now that they had breached Razikale’s prison and touched Razikale herself, but she could not go on. With the weight of sleep already pressing down her shoulders, Elgara suddenly remembered that they had both forgotten to disable the sleep runes. What if the darkspawn broke in and Razikale was unable to wake and fight them off? Meh—she was a dragon. She would be able to do something. Elgara could leave it till the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Occasionally I write a few good descriptive paragraphs, and then the dialogue ruins it. Well, *certain characters* being themselves ruins it. Alim and Zev aren't cut out for Dramatic Brooding or Awestruck Litanies or anything similar. I should have thought of that before I started trying to go for that aesthetic.
> 
> (Well, Alim is actually pretty good at the dramatic brooding, but only without an internal monologue. And only when he's having a really bad day.)


	37. Questionable Applications of Magic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The shit starts to hit the fan. The identity of a certain figure is revealed. Everyone is honestly pretty terrible. This is not what "magic serving man" means, Alim, not that he's at all Andrastian.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for emetophobia and torture for the last 2000 words of this chapter. Also, Zevran kind of gets into Crow headspace, and the Architect tries to be a war criminal. (Neither of these things is particularly surprising, honestly.)

Elgara was shaken awake out of deep, dreamless sleep—the kind where she could not even read her alarm clock, when it woke her from it. It took her a few moments to realize that she had been woken by Nesha and not a clock, when attempting to press buttons turned up nothing to press, nor even to throw across the room until the top half of the bell fell off.

“Mmrffguh?” she asked, sitting up.

“We need to get out of here, now. Forget our stuff. Just the blood, the notes, our armor and weapons, and as much food and water as we can carry but still run, so heavy on the food. We’re being attacked.”

“Attacked?”

“Bunch of Avvar, with some apparent Wardens, by their armor. But Surana says the Last Moon is probably involved? The main point is, we need to leave, and we need to get the civilians out of here. I already got the dwarves up. They’re crying bloody murder about having to leave their equipment, but they also don’t want to die. I’ll figure out how to pay them back for it somehow.”

“Fifteen minutes? To change clothes and eat, not sleep,” Elgara added, realizing what ‘fifteen minutes’ by itself sounded like, when one had just been woken up. Maker, she was covered in filth. Just as well they were apparently abandoning the bedrolls.

“Yeah. I’ll pack stuff.”

It was a good thing, Elgara reflected, that she had not taken any clothing she particularly liked on this journey. It would be a pain in the ass and her wallet to replace her spare barracks kit, but at least that came in standard sizes and the new set would be virtually identical once it had been washed a couple of times. She put on clean pants, shirt, and a sweater, then pulled on her armor over that. It felt a bit bulky—those were not the usual underlayers—but she would be grateful for the wool in the mountain pass, and she could move well enough to cast most spells. Looking around as she fastened the jacket, she saw that Nesha was already in full plate, other than gauntlets. Her gambeson would probably be enough insulation, at night. Elgara choked down some cheese, nuts, and fruit, then found some potions to pack. Nesha handed her a knapsack.

“You have the research notes and half the blood. I have the rest of the blood and the leftover serum from what we gave the miners. Also, most of our water. You need to be faster than I do.”

“Here, potions.”

“Thanks.”

They checked the camp one last time, checked their weapons, and went to escort the miners.

 

At the cave’s river exit, they saw that it was half-light—dawn, if they were right about directions. They continued up, not wanting to have to deal with water or spiders. At the ruined temple, above, they found the darkspawn, staring tensely at a mob of torch-carrying Avvar and a few people in Warden armor—agents of the Last Moon, doubtless. It seemed that neither side wanted to be the first to attack. The darkspawn had steps on their side, and had probably revealed that they were mostly mages; the Avvar had greater numbers and righteous fury. Surana met them as they emerged from the so-far overlooked upper cave exit, calling down from the broken walls above.

“Get the civilians and yourselves to safety,” he ordered. “Take the river.” So much for trying to avoid giant spiders, then.

“What exactly is happening?” asked Elgara. She was technically the highest ranked officially living Warden here, and she was barely awake.

“We found your mole, and he has mostly found us. We can handle it. The Last Moon stole a number of Avvar women as broodmothers, and blamed it on us. How is the dragon?”

“We did it. What about the horde?”

“We stopped them for long enough, it looks like. Quick question, since I’m rusty on the particular science—do you think contraceptive potions would help slow down broodmother conversion?”

“What? Why would—Oh. If you’re trying to save the women the Last Moon took? Possibly? It’s never been tested. Hasn’t even been researched how any of that really works, on that level. You’d still have to give them the Joining, anyway. BRF can’t fix it at that point, if you even have much.”

“Thanks, Enchanter. Now get those documents and those miners to safety.”

 

Alim could tell exactly who the mole was, and the mole was too closely packed into the mob to really be worth trying a Crushing Prison. Besides, setting him on fire would probably be more dramatic. He had to admit, Donnell Oftsmere had not been his greatest suspect. Had the man already been turned before they met, or after? Alim realized that it probably did not matter. Razikale was either already saved or beyond their help, and Sergeant Oftsmere had not been able to stop it. This would be unpleasant, but ultimately insignificant. Well, not entirely insignificant. There were the research notes to think about. That was only a matter of delaying, though. It would matter little to the universe if he died now, and he found that comforting.

An arrow pinged off Alim’s barrier. Just one, not a volley, so probably a man had just gotten over-excited. Still, it meant there had to be a fight now (not that anything but the timing had ever been in question), so Alim cast grease all down the steps. That spell did, after all, have a combat application.

Oftsmere, who seemed to have been given some measure of command by the Avvar, and who was used to fighting alongside mages, yelled at the melee fighters to hold back. They ignored him. Several of them slipped on the grease and went down, knocking over other people as they went.

“Force!” yelled Alim at the Architect (in Tevene), and for once the Architect did not question his strategy and just force-pushed everything on the stairs. Most of the Avvar ended up in a pile at the bottom. Probably only a few would die of crushing injuries or suffocation.

The archers and mages kept hammering away at Alim’s barrier, of course.

“Hexes,” ordered Alim. “Try not to kill.”

“Why are we not killing them?” asked the Architect.

“Because most of them shouldn’t be mixed up in this. They were tricked by the Last Moon double agents.”

“So they are not just shooting arrows at us, they are idiots who are shooting arrows at us. Actually, the former implies the latter, to begin with.” The Architect smashed a couple of archers into a pillar, then prepared to pulp the mass of downed Avvar at the foot of the stairs. His Dragon’s Fist met another barrier.

“The Void are you doing?” hissed the Architect.

“They can’t exactly fight us if they’re stuck under a barrier. There is no need to kill them. Save your mana.”

“To choke you with, you weak halfwit!”

The Architect suddenly found a blade against his throat.

“That is enough,” said Zevran. “We all know that we’re expendable to you now that the little dragon problem is out of the way, but that also means that you and your connections are expendable to us as well now, no?”

“As if you could kill me,” scoffed the Architect.

“There are three men in Warden colors out there. They all appear to be human, and I know at least one of them actually took the Joining, hmmm? I will kill you as many times as is necessary. After the first time, I will do it slowly.”

“All right,” said the Architect, releasing a half-cast spell.

“And you will listen to me on matters of strategy,” added Alim. “I’ve only been an expert on it for my entire adult life. Hexes only, now.”

Arrows still rained against Alim’s first barrier.

A few hexes took care of the remaining archers and the turncoat Wardens, replacing arrows with sounds of retching. Alim dropped the first barrier and replaced it with personal shields, and collected Sergeant Oftsmere and his companions.

 

There was shade enough inside the ruined temple to protect them from the rising sun. It was also the least distance to drag uncooperative, vomiting prisoners. Alim decided to put Donnell in a shield bubble and roll him, once they were up the steps, which was a lot more fun for himself and a lot less for the sergeant. Feeling gleefully vindictive, he decided to go in zigzags across the open courtyard. Once under a suitable overhang, he dropped the bubble, and was met with noises of abject misery and a shaky but deliberate middle finger. He would have done the same, on the other end of such treatment, so he let that pass.

Zevran and the Architect arrived a minute later, having transported their captives by more conventional means, along with the rest of the darkspawn.

“Which one should I deal with first?” Zevran asked.

“Him,” said Alim, pointing to Donnell. “Cast sleep on the other two,” he said to the Architect. A thought struck him. “Hey, childer”—they were grown, now, but still only about four years old—“you should probably try to get properly underground. Pack up our camp.”

Interrogation was really a performance art. Zevran aimed a kick at Donnell’s shoulder—hard enough to seem like he meant it, not hard enough to cause actual injury. “Hey, you,” he said at the same time, purposely deepening his accent—he wanted to be sure he had the man’s attention.

“Fuck off” was the unsurprising reply, followed by some dry heaving.

“Do you know who the Antivan Crows are? I used to be one, before I became a Warden. But you know that, don’t you. Every Warden knows the story of the High Constable and the Chamberlain and how they took over Weisshaupt, and how the only reason neither of them ever became First Warden is because they were elves. But you’re Fereldan, Oftsmere—it’s even in your name, _Of Southmere_ —so maybe you don’t know much about the Crows.”

“It’s a guild of assassins,” spat out Donnell.

“Oh, we are much more than just assassins. Killing is not enough for us. We send snot-nosed apprentices on jobs like that. Real Crows are for when you want your target not just dead but killed slowly. We are torturers”—Zevran punctuated the word with another kick—“and interrogators.” _Kick_.

In reality, Zevran had never progressed beyond the basics of interrogation training, other than what he had learned second-hand by experiencing it, or from Rinna’s enthusiastic descriptions of her studies. (Those had often overlapped, and very enjoyably.) His own training had focused on blades in regular combat, seduction and obscure forms of debauchery, and, once he eventually convinced his masters that he still had a brain after all the orichalcum, drugs and poisons. Still, Donnell Oftsmere had almost certainly never experienced real torture. And half of real torture was manipulation. Not to mention that the man had just thrown up everything he had eaten in the last couple of days, thanks to Entropy magic, and was probably very faint and dehydrated as a result, which was really half the job done before it started. Zevran would be enough.

“I’m going to give you one chance to do this the easy way,” said Zevran, “though really, I’d have so much fun pulling out your fingernails. How long have you worked for the Last Moon, do any of the other five Wardens who work for us also work for the Last Moon, how many Last Moon operatives are there in the Wardens and in which facilities, and what is their plan with regards to the Wardens and Razikale?”

“You think you can scare me with that? Torture me all you like, I’m not betraying him.”

“Hmmm,” said Zevran, licking his lips. In actuality, he was not so much considering an array of appealing options so much as figuring out what his options were, in the first place. He did not have any standard torture implements, and he was trying to avoid permanent damage—on principle, and in case they needed him as a hostage. “Alim, could you hand me your blood knife?”

Alim drew the obsidian curve from its sheath at his belt and handed it to Zevran. He was rather glad that, for once, they did not have to worry about infecting anybody with the Blight. Zevran tested the blade’s handling. It was meant to be used on the wielder’s off-arm, sideways to the body, not away from it like Zevran meant to use it, and with the fingers inside the grip. He finally managed to get a firm but slightly uncomfortable hold on the dull edge. It would do.

“Hold him down,” said Zevran. Alim readied his staff and concentrated, and a few moments later, Blighted vines sprang out of the earth. With the Warden’s weakened condition, this sufficed to tie him in position. (They had not bothered to restrain the other two, who were unconscious.)

Zevran unbuckled Donnell’s armor and gambeson and sliced his shirt open.

“Now when I do this, just remember where I’m not doing it yet, no?” With that, he made a quick, fairly deep slice at the base of Donnell’s left nipple.

“Ow! Fuckin’ bastard!”

“Actually, I do believe my parents were married, before my father died, since my mother ended up a whore to pay his debts. A tragic story, ending in how I became a Crow in the first place—so not so tragic after all, except for you of course.” He made another cut.

Donnell struggled against the vine-ropes and unleashed a stream of profanity, ending with “Fuck you, you blight-sucking knife-ear bitch.” He seemed to be operating under the assumption that if he swore a lot, it would stop hurting. Zevran decided it was time to take him at his word.

“Ooh, the flirtatious approach! Two little cuts, and you’re begging for my giant filthy darkspawn cock. Want to see it?” Zevran began to unlace his armor.

Alim grabbed his arm. “The fuck are you doing?” he hissed.

“Unsettling him. I am not actually going to make him do anything. That would be impractical, not just immoral.”

“Whipping it out is still too far.”

“If you insist.” It seemed odd to care about politeness when he was already _torturing a man_ , but he could not bear to have Alim mad at him. He turned to Donnell again. “I’m afraid you’ll be denied—he’s jealous. I won’t stop _him_ , though,” he said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder at the Architect. “He’s got an even bigger, filthier darkspawn cock.”

“I wash regularly,” muttered the Architect. The sniveling traitor in front of him launched into another profane tirade, and he hit him with more of the same hex to shut him up.

Donnell vomited in Zevran’s general direction, having managed to wrench one arm free of the vines in his renewed convulsions. Zevran sidestepped it neatly, mostly just impressed that the man had anything more to bring up, after earlier. Unless…a truly repellent thought occurred to him, and he decided to make full use of it.

“Go on, then. I can wait. You do not have the luxury of time. You know what that hex is, no? A harmless prank if allowed to wear off, but if not…it sets your entire digestive system in reverse. Just makes it all move backwards. You’re probably wondering how you still have anything in your stomach, just now, no? That is because it is coming from after your stomach. Eventually you will vomit up your own shit—and then you die,” he added nonchalantly.

“It does not do that,” said the Architect under his breath. He looked like he was going to be sick, himself. “Is there even a spell that can do that?”

“Probably?” whispered Alim. “That hex is just nausea, doesn’t even actually do anything to the stomach, but if you target the smooth muscle…and do this thing with those nerves, and reverse…dunno. Would take a few tries, at least. No death, though, except from dehydration or ruptured intestines.”

“Stop. That was not the answer I wanted to hear.”

“If you’re going to throw up, either do it on the Warden or where he can’t see you. Spoils the effect, otherwise.”

Donnell finished an unusually violent round of heaving and hacking, probably as much from the image Zevran had given him as from the hexes. “All right, I’ll tell! I don’t want to die like that! Make it stop!” Then he went back to making very loud sick noises.

Alim relented and took a bit of the edge off the nausea, if only because it was easier to interrogate someone who could actually talk.

“So, the Last Moon,” said Zevran.

“I’m the only one,” said Donnell. “Of the six of us with you, anyway. ‘S far as I know. There’s a few in Serault, but not high up, a couple in Weisshaupt, I think those ones are relatively high up, and I’d guess Halamshiral just ‘cause of the number of men there. I know I’m the only one at Soldier’s Peak right now. I don’t know beyond that. I’m just a sergeant. I’m not even a mage. I’m only told what I need to know in relation to you guys.”

“How did you even end up in the Last Moon?” asked Alim. That was what didn’t fit—a provincial Fereldan in a Tevinter Supremacy cult. His accent was definitely not fake.

“They have agents in the Chantry, in brothels—all over. They do specifically try to recruit Wardens. They didn’t want me recruiting, once I found you, because they were worried I’d be found out and I was their only source on you; normally you’re supposed to pick out other Wardens who might be open to the teachings and send them on. So they start with ‘The Truth about Andraste’ and the role of Orlais in the Chantry, and then they move on to the actual truths.”

“Actual truths,” scoffed Zevran, to himself. He was familiar with that sort of concept. “Did you participate in the abduction of Elgara du Loup?”

“Yes.”

“Physically?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you for being honest.” He would give the man a quick death, if Alim let him kill him.

“What of the other two Wardens with you—are they Last Moon?”

“No. I told them that there was trouble with darkspawn and the Avvar and we were needed. Wasn’t even lying.”

“We can certainly arrange for them to have trouble,” said the Architect.

“No killing civilians just because they have arrows!” said Alim.

“If they are shooting arrows at us, they are not civilians.”

“They aren’t darkspawn, they aren’t Wardens, they aren’t Last Moon. They aren’t enlisted in any formal military organization. They know how to fight, but they’re mostly hunters and other civilian occupations, not a standing military force. Ergo, civilians.”

“A militia?”

“You saw what happened today. I don’t think they’re that regimented.”

Meanwhile, Zevran continued the questioning.

“What is the plan with regards to Razikale?”

“Release the dragon. Stop you from whatever you’re doing. You’re tampering with destiny and the natural order! It’s dangerous.”

“And a world-spanning Blight is not, hmm?”

“The Elect will be preserved.”

There were always fools who were willing to believe they were the special ones. Once, Zevran had been one of them. It only made him pity the man before him less. “You’re too late, you know,” he said.

Donnell laughed and laughed, stopping only when he had to throw up again. “The Master himself speaks in my mind. He has been saying all this time that the hour of our victory is upon us.”

As the earth suddenly shook and the hills echoed with a sound like thunder, Zevran had to admit that the overstuffed weasel had a good sense of dramatic timing. Then the Calling in all their heads save the Architect’s rose to a deafening clang, and darkspawn and Warden alike collapsed, clutching their heads and screaming.

Razikale had woken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really don't think Zevran actually understands that indecent exposure is more than just rude, and illegal in most jurisdictions. Given how he grew up, I think he genuinely doesn't realize that seeing exposed genitalia could be traumatizing beyond unusual individual characteristics, instead of just "ugh someone's naked again." He particularly doesn't get how it's less okay than just mild torture, as long as he doesn't actually force anybody to do anything involving dicks. The horror he's going for here is that he's a darkspawn, currently, and also he's pretty sure that Donnell is straight. Alim's like "dude stop"--he's been trying to control the trainwreck that is all the other darkspawn for years, now.
> 
> Also, Zevran being that gross? Not really my idea. I clicked on something on Pixiv a few months ago, and it was really not what I thought it was going to be. I looked at it for a quarter of a minute, thought "I'm glad this person has that much acceptance for what they're into," and hit the back button. And then I realized that most people--though, honestly, probably not as many of the ones reading this--would be exponentially more grossed out than I was by that, and decided it would be a great way to get a Tevinter supremacist to capitulate. I wouldn't want to die that way, either.
> 
> Seriously, though, that hex just fucks with your balance and coordination. The nausea is mostly a byproduct, though a useful one, in most of the cases where you want to use that hex. And Alim's a healer. As long as it doesn't get on his face or into an open wound, he's pretty much immune to gross. The Architect can more than handle blood, but he doesn't like that kind of gross. It's actually pretty interesting figuring out what each of them would be squicked by. They all have slightly different definitions of what constitutes a biohazard and what is non-hazardous but disgusting.


	38. What Rough Beast, Its Hour Come Round at Last

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our favorite lesbian Wardens experience the Awakening of Razikale. The Last Moon looks after its own. An old friend of Alim's makes an appearance. (Yes, I'm writing the books out of order. Bite me.) An exceedingly obvious fact that everyone somehow overlooked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Der Feuer" means "the fire" in German. Notice it's spelled quite differently from "Fuhrer." Don't get your panties in a twist. (It's Walder's nickname because his primary element is fire, and because he was a hot-headed little shit about 35 years ago. He credits Surana with preventing him from becoming a rage abomination.)

At least fifty percent of the Frostback Basin must be just the Varsdotten River, Elgara thought, as she hit another spider with her staff. And the Varsdotten River was full of spiders, because why wouldn’t a freakishly warm valley in southern Ferelden have a river full of spiders? It might be boring if all she had to do was wade through a creek without boots. (Because it was really a creek. So far it had not gotten more than sixty feet wide. Maybe “river” was when it flooded in spring.) But no, there were spiders. She was pretty sure one of them had been fade-touched.

The earth shook, and the world cut away. Elgara saw trees far below her, as if from a great height, and suddenly the sun was painfully bright. She opened her mouth, and her voice was not her own—a clear, familiar, unending call. And then…water in her face?

The vision resolved into the trees above the Varsdotten River, and Elgara realized that she was lying on her back in the creek shallows. Nesha was calling her name.

Elgara turned sideways and spat out mud; she must have fallen forward and been turned over. “I’m awake.”

“The dragon woke up. That felt like the dragon waking up? And then you passed out. Maybe it’s worse for mages.”

“What did you see?”

“Didn’t see anything. Just heard it Calling for a bit. You?”

“It was as if I was there. As if I was the dragon. I can still hear it.”

“That’s…not normal.”

“I know.” Elgara pushed herself to her feet. “…Fuck.”

“It can’t be the Calling. You haven’t been Joined for half that long.”

“No. Yesterday. I pricked my finger. Dragon blood.”

“Would that…?”

“I don’t have a better explanation?”

“The Joining already contains Archdemon blood. How would more do anything?”

“Dead, corrupted ones. If you’ve already got that, and then you get the fresh blood of a living, uncorrupted one? Maker, am I going to turn into a lizard?”

“I think the Moon Men and the Snake Kings are just a conspiracy theory.”

“What if they’re not? What if someone broke in before and drank Razikale’s blood?”

“Elgara. We were digging for days. Through solid rock with a metal drill. I think you’re just panicking.”

“It’s very sensible panicking!”

“…I can’t fault you on that.”

A spitball of venom flew past Elgara’s head and landed in the water. “Ah fuck. More spiders.”

 

After several minutes, Razikale’s Calling went back to a slightly louder version of the same thing the darkspawn were used to hearing. Alim curled up in a ball, dazed from the magic and rather off-balance over how he could still hear normally after something that had seemed so loud. There had been a physical noise, he was certain, apart from the sound of the earthquake—it was just that the magical one had been so much louder. Alim sat up and began to check himself for magical damage.

An anti-magic blast rolled over the ruined temple, and that was definitely not the Architect’s casting. Alim wobbled to his feet, ready to fight without magic; a few seconds later, his scrying re-established itself, and he recognized the figure strolling into the courtyard.

“Eyras,” Alim said, not lowering his staff. “Come for your friends, I take it?”

“And will you give them to me?”

“If it will avoid another senseless battle, I am willing to negotiate,” said the Architect. Alim saw a flicker of motion behind the intruders—that would be Zevran, in case the situation escalated.

“Are they all members?” asked Alim. He wanted to know if Donnell had been lying.

Eyras peered at the men’s faces—the two who had been sleep-spelled were still only half awake, and Donnell was still too peakish to stand. “Only him,” he said, pointing to Donnell. “As far as I am aware, anyway. I think the others are loyal Wardens following his orders.”

“Take your turncoat,” said the Architect. “I do not want to waste any more time on him. Tell your master that he has failed and we have succeeded, and that if he has a problem with that, he can fight me but it will not change anything.”

“A bit boastful, are we?” remarked Eyras, flicking a regeneration spell at Donnell—the sort of half-assed cantrip that student mages used to be able to stay awake longer. “I’m surprised you didn’t try to bargain. We have the Madman, you know.”

“You are aware that she hates me with the passion of a dragon? She probably went back to the Forgewright the moment our runner told her Razikale was saved.”

“Think what you wish,” said Eyras, stalking out of the ruins with Donnell at his heels.

“Aren’t we going to go after him?” asked Alim.

“No. I want to leave this, if we can.”

“What about the Wardens?”

The Architect cast another burst of Entropy in their direction. “We will be long gone, before that wears off.”

 

They were not entirely lost. They were simply somewhat vague on their exact location, and where they ought to be headed next. Elgara was still having blackouts every so often where she saw and felt what the dragon did. No scales, yet, though, and for that she was grateful. Still, the visions were exhausting. She also wondered if it meant that the death of Razikale would kill her as well, or if she were the only one who could kill it. She had not been able to bring herself to mention either of those things to Nesha.

“We’re on the Fereldan side of the Frostbacks,” argued Nesha, gesturing with the leg of a wild turkey, at dinner. “Soldier’s Peak is the nearest Warden facility. We should go there. Not to mention that Ferelden is a lot more lax about unauthorized missions.”

“They also are the ones who had that business with the Architect in the 30s, though. I’d say go to Serault. It’s a research facility and I’m assigned there. Besides, Orlais still recognizes my citizenship, even though I’m a Warden, and can protect me from certain kinds of fallout from all this. I know Ferelden won’t do the same for Wardens originating from it—were you even a citizen, before you became a Warden?”

“Nope! Pretty sure my birth wasn’t even registered outside the Merchants’ Guild. And the Carta files for who has what leverage against them. But Serault’s all the way in western Orlais. Maybe Halamshiral?”

“I guess. They’ll just send me on to Serault, anyway.”

“Which is why I recommended Soldier’s Peak in the first place.”

“No, it’s different. I’d be considered to be submitting myself to the jurisdiction of the Warden-Commander of Fereldan, who ranks above my CO in Orlais. I think so, anyway. Close enough that Orlais might use it as an excuse to get rid of me.”

“If we go to Orlais, we have to cross over a mountain range on foot.”

“We did it before!”

“Not with the most valuable magical material in the world in our backpacks!”

“So half a mountain crossing versus a whole mountain crossing? I want to go back to Orlais. It’s worse if we show up late from leave from an illicit mission than if we just cop to an illicit mission.”

“Okay, fine. Orlais. Since we’re both stationed there. I’m just worried about the dragon things and you.”

“I’ll live. Unless I fall off a cliff, but that’s why I’ve got the notes and you’ve got the jars full of blood.”

 

As it happened, they only had half a mountain crossing after all.

They reached the top of the pass they had come by, finally, and were just about to go on again when Elgara—the tallest in the party—noticed a glint of metal down the other side that had not been there before when they stopped to rest.

“I think there might be bandits,” she said, turning to the others.

Obviously, the best thing to do was to barricade the pass, which they did. They would only have gotten a couple more miles before nightfall, anyway. The glints of metal grew closer until they were very definitely a company of soldiers, marching in their direction. And that was odd; bandits would be less numerous and less organized, most likely. Elgara considered taking some of the barricades down; she did not want to appear to be provoking hostilities. She squinted to look more closely. That emblem they were carrying looked familiar…

“Yo! Nesha! It’s a bunch of Wardens. Of course they’d have heard the dragon wake up. We’re complete idiots. Let’s un-barricade the pass, and then turn ourselves in.”

“What about the plan to get a copy of the research to Orzammar?”

“It’ll have to wait. Besides, I doubt Surana gave us his only copies.”

Thirty minutes later, two figures walked down the road to meet an entire company of soldiers. They were dressed in travel-stained but entirely recognizable Warden armor, and obviously not the type that would be worn by returning advance scouts—not that they were going to send out men alone, this close to the pass. It would be more surprising if there were not bandits here than if there were. The company halted.

“Who are you?” asked one of the officers, riding forward. “You’re not with us. Especially you. I know who all the mages are, by now, and you’re definitely not with Halamshiral.”

Elgara and Nesha gave their names, postings, and serial numbers. The officer’s eyebrows came together at Elgara’s name, as if he were trying to remember where he had heard it before. Right—Elgara’s kidnapping and the phylactery controversy must have reached the Halamshiral Wardens. It seemed almost a lifetime ago, as though it had happened to a different person. Elgara thought about the Old God blood. Maybe she _was_ a different person, now.

“We were conducting research on local legends of the Frostbacks that seemed to have significance for Warden endeavors, if they were based in fact,” said Elgara. “We used leave time to do this. We have found magical components and research that bear great promise for fighting the Blight.”

“The magical components are breakable and in my pack,” added Nesha. “Please be careful with them.” Which meant ‘please don’t manhandle us,’ and would not be taken as ‘we are made of bombs,’ she hoped.

“I take it you are aware of what has happened?”

“Razikale?” asked Elgara.

“What makes you think it is not Lusacan?” asked the officer, looking even more suspicious.

“Where the thing came from is well known as an ancient site dedicated to Razikale.”

The officer apparently still thought something did not add up. “You two are coming with us. We need all the hands we can get. I trust you will remain on your best behavior.” Which obviously meant ‘we’re only not tying you up so that things appear normal.’

“What about our leave? We’ll be late—” asked Nesha.

“Your commanding officers will be notified. And we will speak more later.”

Elgara and Nesha fell into formation. They hoped the miners had enough sense to get out of the way, or at least pretend not to recognize them.

 

Walder “der Feuer” paced back and forth in the tent, trying to decide if the two Wardens in front of him were geniuses or complete idiots. They certainly did not appear to be lying, and that was Alim’s handwriting in those notes, all right, and too many pages for forgery to be likely. Still, it was hard to reconcile the man he had known with their description of a ghoul who worked with the Architect. So he _had_ turned up again—the Architect, not Alim. They had been expecting the Architect. Did these two know? Not about what happened in the thirties, everyone knew that, but twenty years before, which was kept much more hidden. Der Feuer checked his notes again. No, they wouldn’t know, unless “Surana” or “Arainai” had told them—the mage was a Specialist 1 st Class, and the dwarf was a recently promoted Corporal. Remille’s Folly was off-limits to anyone below the rank of Warden-Commander or equivalent, for obvious reasons. Der Feuer now wondered if this was actually a mistake. If this was in fact Surana’s work, it seemed that he had used his knowledge of information clearances to target Wardens with enough access to do his dirty work but too little to know the Architect’s true history.

Der Feuer felt the Fade gather around himself like static, and decided to let it. It might intimidate the idiot genius mage he was trying to decide what to do with. He had just missed her, in Serault—he had wanted to offer his condolences for the Last Moon thing, but she had gone on leave just days before he had arrived to inspect the facility, in his official capacity as High Chamberlain and Director of Research. Well deserved leave, he had thought at the time. And then he had gone to give a lecture on the life and research of the ‘late’ Surana in Halamshiral, while he was in Orlais, and thus he had been at one of the two closest Warden facilities when Razikale awoke. Walder had always wondered how the Wardens had known when a Blight started, exactly—Surana had not been able to tell him, back when he was a recruit, because Surana had only been Joined after the start of the Fifth Blight. He had always assumed it was just a change in the dreams. But no—now he knew. That sound had echoed through his head like nothing else he had ever experienced, and he and a dozen other Wardens had dropped their breakfast trays on the floor in Halamshiral’s mess hall. He would never forget that sound, nor how it was immediately followed by splashes of undercooked fried egg on his pants leg and his own swearing in Fellsprache.

“You are aware,” he said, “that the last time the Architect tried to ‘save’ an Old God like this, he started the Fifth Blight?”

“…No,” said Du Loup. “But the scientific theory seemed sound. If they sterilized it properly, Razikale should be safe from catching the Blight—from that. We waited until the darkspawn were almost upon her, anyway.”

“Scheisse,” muttered Der Feuer. “We knew there was higher darkspawn activity in the Frostbacks, but we thought we had a few years.”

“You say the Architect accidentally started the Fifth Blight?” said Du Loup. “Maybe Razikale was supposed to be the fifth. Only, then Urthemiel was awakened by the Architect. So half the digging would already have been done for Razikale.”

“I suppose that’s possible.” He was not really convinced.

“The rock near Razikale is soft limestone,” said Nesha. “It would have been a few more years, if it weren’t for that. Also, there’s another darkspawn out there, kind of like the Architect? The Forgewright or something like that. He makes darkspawn more intelligent about machines, and the Horde built a fancy drill or something.”

And that tripped something half-remembered in Der Feuer’s memory. Only half-remembered, though; he had fled Hossberg Circle in his early teens, years before its reorganization (Hossberg Circle had never actually fallen—merely restructured, after the Mage-Templar War), and had had almost nothing to do with the Chantry since then. He did not recognize the name as one of the Seven. Still, ‘kind of like the Architect’ made things clear enough.

“So you’re saying there’s another reincarnating darkspawn out there, and it wants the Old Gods to be corrupted?”

“Yeah. Some kind of prophecy thing. We think it’s connected to the Last Moon, from what Surana says.”

“Great. But the real issue here: You used leave to perform an unauthorized mission, you had contact with an uncorrupted Archdemon, which may or may not have corrupted it, you involved civilians, and you engaged in conspiracy with agents of the Blight.”

“To stop the Blight, in good faith,” said Elgara. “Historically, there is precedent for—”

“You’re still both getting court-martialed, when we’ve dealt with this mess of shit.”

“I did not expect otherwise, ser.”

“What about the research?” asked Nesha. “We’ve brought back the uncorrupted blood of an Old God and a means of immunization against the Taint. Surely that is a point in our favor, ser.”

“I don’t suppose you tested the immunization on civilians?”

“We tested it on animals first.”

“And the civilians?”

“It’s been several weeks, and they’re fine.”

“We have no reason to believe they were directly exposed to the Taint,” said Elgara. “We merely used it as an extra safeguard for the team of miners we involved in the project. They were made aware of both the risk and the nature of the injection.”

“Anything else?”

“One of the other four was a mole for the Last Moon. The Last Moon knows much of what happened. Also,” continued Elgara, “I was exposed to Razikale’s blood and now I’m having visions of what the dragon sees.”

Der Feuer stared at her. “You two aren’t making my job easy, are you.”

 

The darkspawn finished packing up what the humans had left—and none too soon, for regular darkspawn had started pouring out of the tunnel they had bored down to Razikale. Alim and Zevran managed to salvage most of Cadash and Du Loup’s things, and cached them near the ruined temple. Then they had gone back down, mingling freely with all the darkspawn, to look at Razikale’s chamber. It was empty, with a great hole in one side, where she must have broken her way out through the passage the Horde had drilled. The place made Alim and Zevran uneasy, and they soon left. There was no sign of any of the rest of the Seven in that place.

Under the cover of night, the darkspawn set off to see what they could find of Razikale—minus the childer and the other emissaries, who had no idea what to do on the surface and who had been sent to guard the Augur and take some things back to her complex. Alim led, being best attuned to the dragon’s Calling.

“There,” he said, looking down from a cliff. Below him, Razikale circled in the moonlight, and below her lay the Avvar hold. Then Razikale folded her wings and darted downward, and the color of night changed from moon-blue to fire-orange.

“Shit,” breathed Alim as screams rose from below. “Fucking shit. We were so focused on whether we could save Razikale from the Blight that we completely forgot about the fact that Razikale _is still a fucking dragon_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sincerely apologize for the Jurassic Park reference.
> 
> There aren't very many chapters left now. Chapter 39 is written and will be posted on Patreon in a few minutes, and then there will be 1-2 more chapters, and then an epilogue. And god, is that weird. I've been working on this fic for an entire year, which is long enough that I've forgotten what it feels like not to be. In the end, it will be 115-120k, and I'm hoping for an even 42 chapters. And then I'll probably go back and do some of the editing I never had the time to do while sticking to a posting schedule, but I'll mostly be planning the next longfic and putting out two or three shorts per month. It's going to be quite a change.


	39. What Price to Pay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Wardens assess the overall situation and wonder if it is even possible to kill the rampaging Razikale now. Alim and Zevran go to rescue the Madman, and drag the Architect along. The Architect is terrible at tactics, and Alim probably should not have gotten used to obeying him. The Madman is possibly the sanest Sidereal Magister.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for a human getting eaten alive by a starving broodmother. Also torture and demon-summoning.
> 
> As you may have noticed, the final number of chapters is now specified. Next week's chapter is super long--almost double-length, but not quite long enough to justify splitting it--and then there is a short epilogue the week after. As always, Patreon subscribers get everything a week early. And then it's planning and shorts for several months.

Elgara had That Look in her eyes again—she was seeing what Razikale saw. She was riding on one of the supply carts, to keep from falling over when these fits took her. Beside her was the chest of Razikale’s blood, the bottles hastily padded with spare clothing. (At least the Frostback Basin was warm enough that no one needed to wear those cloaks and sweaters, even at night.) Nesha plodded along behind the cart, taking very long steps for a dwarf, but she was used to it after years of drills with elves and humans.

Elgara gasped and sat upright. “What the—Why’re you doing that?”

“What?” asked Nesha.

“Razikale. She’s attacking an Avvar village. I don’t understand—she’s not Blighted. I can feel it.”

“You know,” said Nesha, “she _is_ a dragon. Dragons do tend to attack villages. At least she hasn’t got the Horde with her, too.”

“Then explain _that_ ,” said Der Feuer, from his horse, a little ways up, pointing at the southeastern half of the night sky. It was without stars, as if covered by clouds, though the rest of the night was clear. “That is a Blight fog. It feels Blighty. At least, I’m reasonably sure of it. We have no one left who actually got close to one, during the last Blight, just descriptions.”

“I can’t really feel it, ser,” said Elgara.

“It’s pretty far out. I’ve been a Warden for over thirty years, and I can just barely sense it. But I’m pretty sure that’s not just a cloud.”

“So they’ll still follow Razikale even if she’s not Blighted? Ser,” asked Nesha.

“They certainly did while she was still asleep. So, congratulations on your experiment: it has changed nothing, and now Razikale may be impossible to kill.”

“Or may not require anyone’s death to kill, ser,” Elgara argued. “Or at least, not directly.”

“Supposedly, it took until Andoral that we were really sure that the one who struck the killing blow on an Archdemon would die, because it is so easy to get killed by the flailing of a dying Blighted dragon, yes,” said Der Feuer. “Though apparently we came to the right conclusion with theory, before that. I will probably attempt to be the one to do it, this time, because I at least can do so at range. The rest of the relatively expendable Senior Wardens can’t.”

“Do we have griffons, ser?” asked Nesha. “I haven’t seen any.”

“Not in time, no. We were supposed to break ground for a new aerie just outside Halamshiral next week. It wouldn’t be ready for months, though.”

“I should be the one to do it,” said Elgara. “I’m bound to Razikale. Even if we messed up the way the Joining works, that might do it.”

“No.” The senior Warden nudged his horse forward, and it seemed that that was all he was going to say on the matter.

 

“I still see no reason why we should not just leave. Our task is accomplished.”

“Because it’s the right thing to do, idiot,” snapped Zevran. The three had been arguing for hours.

“And, as I said before, rescuing the Madman will leave her in your debt. She will remember,” added Alim.

“‘Rescuing.’ She merely returned to them. She hates me almost as much as she hates being a broodmother. Knowing her, she gave in and started eating, too.”

“It’s your own fault she hates you,” muttered Alim. Louder, “What about the Avvar?”

“I’m sure the Wardens will take care of that, eventually. There are plenty of caves to hide in until then.”

“Caves full of darkspawn.”

“It is still none of our business. We have better things to do.”

“That’s fine,” said Zevran. “We’ll just go by ourselves, then.”

“What? You can’t do that.”

“We can and will,” said Alim. “You’re not actually in charge of us.”

“Do you really want to anger me?”

“Honestly? No. But I really doubt you can stop _both of us_ from incapacitating you long enough to get away. I can fix pretty much whatever you break, if you try. I also don’t think you really want to permanently maim either of us. We’re the only things that used to be people who can tolerate being around you for long periods of time, and I think that means something to you.”

“Oh for the love of the gods, fine,” grumbled the Architect. “We will rescue the woman who hates me with all her being and is probably trying to lead us all into a trap. Are you happy now?”

“Not really, but at least you’ve stopped making things worse.”

“Just remember, I can kill you before you would even notice if you start again,” said Zevran, grinning.

 

The sun did not rise, that morning, so much as it staggered out of bed, severely hungover, and slid the teakettle onto the stove with its eyes still half-closed. Blight-fog hung in the air like angry, mildewed cotton wool, and it was a great convenience to the three darkspawn who plodded in the direction that Eyras had pointed them. Alim cast about in the Void for the fog spell, curious what it was. There. Interesting, but there were plenty of emissaries already working on it, and he was busy.

If one knew what concealment magic looked like, it was actually fairly easy to recognize, especially when it was in the form of hastily set runes. The trio set their eyes on a landmark so that the magic would not turn their steps away, and approached quietly.

The landmark resolved into a wagon with the Madman tied to it.

“Oh, that is just cruel,” breathed Zevran, taking in the situation. Just out of the Madman’s reach, someone had also tied a wounded man in the early stages of ghoulification. She herself was, if anything, even more emaciated than when they had seen her last.

“It may still be a trap,” cautioned the Architect. “She hates me enough to do this to herself if she thinks it would hurt me.”

“It is undoubtedly a trap,” said Zevran. “I do not think, however, that it was set by her. The captain who ties himself to the mast and refuses to plug his ears as he sails past the island of demons makes a nice story, but it is quite stupid, in reality.”

“You know that story?” asked the Architect, surprised.

“Everyone knows that story,” said Alim. “Though not many read it in Ancient Neromenian.”

“I have the best chance of getting her out unnoticed,” said Zevran. “I will go do that, no?” He darted forward, blurring like smoke.

Up on the cart, the Madman strained towards the wounded man. The wood carried the impact of new weight, though the man who landed did so silently, and she swung towards the newcomer, baring her teeth.

“Hey,” said Zevran, hands up. “We’re getting you out of here. Stay calm.” The Madman sat back, still growling, and Zevran picked the locks.

Instantly, the Madman lunged at the wounded man and sank her teeth into his throat, his scream coming out as gurgles. Zevran tried to pull her back, to leave, but she shook him off and continued feeding, leaving the throat as the flow of blood slowed and ripping open the abdomen instead, stuffing her mouth with meat and blood, gore dripping down her face and chest.

Zevran warred between revulsion and hunger.

At last she raised her head, panting, and seemed for the first time to recognize Zevran. “You are here.”

“I am. We were told you had been taken.”

“Is _he_ here?”

“Yes. He did not want to come, but he can’t bear the idea that we might do something without him.” Zevran paused. “How much time do you have before…” Zevran mimed ‘growing,’ putting both hands on his stomach and pulling them away, and then gestured at the gutted corpse.

“It’s not enough. There’s never enough. If I resist again, very little will change.” Zevran looked at the corpse again, and realized that even with perfect conversion, the Madman could hardly gain more than thirty pounds from this meal. It would take a battlefield of wounded to grow her to the size of the Augur.

“We should get out of here, no?” he said, hopping off the cart and reaching out his hand to help her down. She took it, and Zevran realized that he felt no magic on her or near her. “Did they drug you?” he asked.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“To stop your magic?”

“And to increase my hunger.”

“You should run away,” said Zevran, as they crawled through the grass. “Find a thaig somewhere where no one knows about it and hide from all the others. Don’t tell me, either. They really don’t like you.”

“That is the understatement of the millennium. We all actually hate each other. We simply end up having to work together practically all the time.”

“Specifically you even more, though, I think. And I wonder why. I mean—” A very loud squawk pierced the air as a ward flared beneath them. “Shit. How did I not notice that?”

“I think it’s keyed to me.” Abandoning sneakiness, they ran, hunched over to avoid arrows or magic. Zevran felt a shield ripple over them—Alim’s casting.

“Well you certainly fucked that up,” said the Architect, when they got back to the bushes they had been hiding in.

“Yes, the non-mage is completely at fault for not noticing a hidden ward keyed to someone other than him and masked with concealment magic. And she’s on magebane.”

“I would tell you to work through it,” said the Architect, turning towards the Madman, “but you really are not impressing me with your willpower today.”

“I would eat you, but you’re disgusting,” said the Madman. The Architect’s face went mask-blank and he took a step back.

“Focus on the angry people trying to kill us, yes?” shouted Alim.

Their odds were not particularly good. They had one rogue and two mages—three if Alim could manage to summon something and convince it to help him rid the Madman of whatever the Last Moon had given her—against what would, in a few minutes, be a couple hundred. Right now, the alarm was still being spread. It seemed that the Madman’s circumstances had been less a trap set for them and more public humiliation and torture for torture’s sake (with the wards a caution against a solo escape), with how the camp was not all ready for battle.

The Architect was not a strategist, and he was still annoyed about not having been allowed to massacre the Avvar the other day. Instead of seeing the situation for what it was, he cast a Dragon’s Fist, sideways, which killed very few people and mostly just reduced the torture cart and a number of tents to scrap.

“The fuck are you doing?” yelled the other three all at once, in some variation.

“Solving a problem,” answered the Architect, in a tone that made clear that he thought they were all morons. “Get her in working order,” he said to Alim, gesturing towards the Madman.

“Fuck you to the Void,” muttered Alim, deciding how to cast this spell. It had been a while since he had done this much battlefield healing. This was supposed to require spirits, and he could not even feel the Fade now.

Alim took out his blood knife and cut his arm, much deeper and with a different angle than usual. He closed his eyes and thought, calling out to the Void as loud as he could, echoing against the Veil.

Shades answered him. Alim flung his own blood at them, command in his will and on his lips. This slowed them enough for him to bind them properly, with the same sigil he had seen the Architect use on the ogre. Shades did not bleed, and he had no lyrium, but it would have to be enough. Then he drew his focus towards the Madman’s body, seeking out the atoms of the familiar shape of magebane (and goodness, that was quite a dose; how was she even coherent?), and wrenched the shades to the task of cleaning it out from her blood. It became an entirely different spell, and six times as exhausting, to force instead of ask.

The spell’s work finished and he banished the shades, already weakened by the use he had put them to. Alim closed the magic, and the world wobbled a bit.

The Madman steadied him. “Have you ever actually summoned a demon before?”

“No.”

“It is pretty obvious. Good healing, though.”

“You don’t have to console me.”

“The prices were absolutely ruinous for healers that could do that. Let alone adapt it.”

“Yes, well, I’m not for sale. Tell me if you start experiencing anything unusual, because the shades were fighting my will and just broke down most of the drug, instead of actually getting rid of it.”

“I’m mostly starving myself while in the process of turning into a broodmother. Poison won’t feel different from that.”

“That’s probably true,” Alim admitted.

Meanwhile, the Architect was still wasting mana on dramatics, while Zevran eliminated the people sensible and fast enough to try to sneak up on him. Really, the larger the scale of the battle, the worse the Architect’s tactics got. By now most of the tents were so much splintered wood and torn canvas, but it was the middle of the day, so almost no one had been in them. From the relative lack of bloodstains, the mess tent had emptied out before he had managed to flatten it.

“Do you have enough mana back to hold the shields?” Alim asked the Madman. “I’m pretty close to out, and I need to go reason with him before we all get killed.” There was blood, but he did not want to lose more than he already had, today.

“I think so. Link me into the spell.”

Like many sustained spells, shields took much more mana to cast than to maintain. Establishing them took a moderate amount all at once, whereas feeding the structure took a trickle. Alim led the Madman’s awareness into the flow of the spell, let her start adding her mana to his, and then backed off. He needed to actually rest, but between the state of the Veil here and his being an arcanist, if he could get five or ten minutes of not casting, he might be able to do something useful without giving himself mana burn. Alim marched up to the Architect.

“Stop using that spell. They’re too spread out. I think they’ve been trained to fight magical opponents—I recognize that formation.”

“It seems to be working so far.”

“No, that’s Zevran cleaning up after you. Use chain lightning, or better yet, let’s get out of here. They’ll have their mages out here, soon.”

“That is the opposite of what I do,” griped the Architect, but he switched spells; within seconds, he had killed or maimed as many people as he had managed to in the entire rest of the battle. “And I am hoping they send their mages out. These soldiers are hopeless.”

“They’re not hopeless; Zev’s just that good. When the mages come, they will win. We have no lyrium, the Madman is sick in a way no one can fix, both her and I barely have enough mana to keep you shielded because you decided you wanted to play whack-a-cultist instead of getting out of here and letting the magebane wear off naturally, and you’ve wasted half of yours smashing empty tents. Let’s go. They’ll probably follow us, and you’ll get the duel you want.”

“Fine.”

“Zev, retreat!” Alim shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth.

As if in punctuation, a giant fireball careened in their direction.

“The Forgewright,” called the Madman, as Alim and the Architect dived in opposite directions.

“We’re too close together!” yelled Alim, after the heat and noise. “Pair up and scatter. Madman with me, Architect with Zevran. Concealment.” Not that he wanted to leave Zevran alone with the Architect, but the alternatives were worse. He could only hope that Zevran could conceal two people at once, that the Architect could half-ass a shield, and that neither would kill the other.

They ran as boulders and more fireballs rained out of the sky—at least three different casters, Alim noted, from the feel of it. He just kept casting Haste on the Madman, so she could run, and prayed it would not cause any extra medical issues. They zigzagged through ancient trees and rock formations, and Alim only hoped that Zevran could convince the Architect to do so as well.

And then it stopped. Out of mana, he guessed. Or someone had taken a phylactery of the Madman, and they had decided to wait and use that. It was what he himself would have done. It looked like whoever had trained this group of the Last Moon was an ex-Templar, or had learned from one, so someone there probably knew how to use phylacteries for tracking.

By now they were almost at Razikale’s reach, and Alim wanted nothing more than to collapse onto the ground and never move or cast another spell again. The Madman, who had been powering their shields all this time, did not seem any better. She looked dazed, and was nearly doubled over.

“Are you in pain?” Alim asked, hoping the words had come out in the right language.

“The conversion process is a bit crampy.”

Alim, who had once dissected a dead broodmother, knew the extent of the structural changes conversion entailed and suspect that ‘crampy’ was something of an understatement.

“Please don’t kill me for suggesting this, but…I’m guessing a total hysterectomy doesn’t stop this, if you haven’t asked me to do that, yet?”

“No. It just grows back.”

“Then honestly, probably the best advice I can give is to find a safe place with a food supply and stop fighting it. I know you hate it, but killing your current body slowly is probably worse.”

“Funny. That is almost what your friend said. The both of you are probably right.” They walked on in silence for a few moments, until the Madman spoke again. “I just miss being a woman. I miss being alive. I miss being able to eat a meal and be sated. I even miss the squabbles and red tape and assassinations and the endless duels from every male priest of Zazikel who thought they could lead the cult better than a woman. And I don’t know which reminds me more that I ruined that—being a broodmother, or how much it hurts not to be.”

Alim held up his own hand and stared at its filed claws for several seconds before he again let it drop to his side, but said nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Architect just gets worse at battle tactics the bigger the battle gets. He's fine against a small group of people, but he goes for showy, powerful spells instead of what is adequate to get the job done. If you want him to build something out of stone blocks and magic, he's your guy. If not, you want almost anyone else.
> 
> "Dragon's Fist" is Fist of the Maker, but that name doesn't make sense for an ancient Tevinter force mage. Obvious name is obvious.


	40. Ultima

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final battle.
> 
> Ultima (\ ˈəl-tə-mə \\): The last syllable of a word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Despite the title, not the final chapter. There will be an epilogue next week.

Although the location was well-known and thus not safe, if they were to get the Madman properly set up in a thaig, they needed the only Deep Roads entrance in the Frostback basin—the one under Razikale’s ruined temple. So they went there. The Madman was barely conscious from pain and hunger for the last couple miles, so Alim and Zevran supported her. For once the Architect offered to help, but the Madman became agitated if he got within an arm’s length of her, so they all agreed that he should walk behind them.

The cave turned out to be full of Wardens.

“Please don’t kill us!” Alim shouted, even as he held a spell in his hands. Hand. The other, along with his arm and shoulder, was holding up a nearly unconscious Sidereal Magister. A fight like this would be truly difficult. The four of them were packed into a stairwell, and the Wardens were spread out in the shadows.

“I think that’s Surana,” said a voice he recognized as Du Loup’s. “Don’t attack!”

“I’ll attack if I see fit, Specialist,” said a voice Alim found familiar but could not place. Wisplight brightened. “Maker. How the fuck…? That _is_ him.”

“Walder?” Alim squinted against the sudden light. The casting left no doubt. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Cleaning up after you—and it _is_ you. You’re not possessed. Even an intelligent demon couldn’t cast like you. Why the fuck are _you_ working with _the Architect_? Is he forcing you?”

“He stopped me from dying when I was too close to dead to be able to do anything about it. By the time I was strong enough I could have left, I was used to it.”

“You mean brainwashed into thinking that one of his terrible ideas made sense?”

“Wouldn’t you have thought that an Archdemon would be less aggressive if it weren’t Blighted?”

“Okay, but…”

“You lied.” Elgara’s voice cut in, cold and sharp. “You said you were in charge.”

“It’s more of a continual directional struggle. I’m sorry. I just…”

“You just had to manipulate an appropriately-educated mage-Warden into trusting you. I get it.” And that was not a tone where ‘I get it’ implied forgiveness. “You probably knew I looked up to you, and you used that.”

“I just wanted to stop the Blight!”

“We always use that justification. Only, sometimes it doesn’t work. Some things are too much for too little return for that excuse.”

“What about having a long-term immunization against the Blight?”

“We’d have figured it out in ten or fifteen years, anyway! Without you _using me!_ I’m getting court-martialed for your experiment _that didn’t work!_ ”

“I think I have a way to bring down Razikale without anybody getting killed,” said the Architect. “The Warden way is not going to work unless Razikale is killed once and her soul passes into a Tainted host.”

“Or into me.” Elgara explained her situation.

“So I do not have to explain the details of what I plan to do. I will bind myself similarly, strike the blow against Razikale, and my current form will be destroyed. It will be extremely unpleasant, but I will come back.”

“In whose body?” asked Walder. Maker, did the idiots these two had duped even know about that?

“Some of the Last Moon are traitor Wardens, or effectively Wardens through one of their higher initiation rituals. If we lure the Last Moon’s forces to the battle against Razikale, I am likely to pass into one of them.” He was probably hoping for Issus Eyras.

Walder considered it, lips pursed, for nearly a minute. “All right. We will try that. But all of you will submit yourselves to the Wardens, once Razikale is killed. Whether she stays dead or not.” He paused, then spoke solely to Alim. “He doesn’t have the sort of powers Corypheus had, does he?”

“No. His powers are in a different direction, and little beyond what is in our records.” Alim deliberately neglected to mention that _he himself_ had ‘the sort of powers Corypheus had,’ in a currently much lesser degree. Lying again, but if he never intended to use them on actual people…well, un-Blighted people, he amended, recalling an earlier argument with the Architect. Un-Blighted people or people who were only very slightly Blighted, he amended again, because Wardens. Unless he really had to.

“And what about that?” asked Walder, pointing to the Madman. “What is that? What happened to it?”

To Alim’s surprise, the Architect answered. “That is another like me or the late Corypheus. She was the first broodmother, and every time she has come back, she undergoes the process of turning into one once more. She could be the key to understanding that process or even reversing it.”

And there was the hook. Next to Alim’s ear, the Madman slurred out something that sounded like “Fuck you.”

“But what’s wrong with her now? Is she wounded?”

“If she doesn’t eat, it stops the conversion,” explained Alim. “She’s been doing that for about a year now, and it’s taken a toll. Then, a few hours ago, she slipped up and did eat, but not enough, and it made the situation worse. Plus she was given magebane, and I did a sub-par job of cleaning that up.”

“There are still spirits willing to work with you?”

“No. That’s what I meant by sub-par.”

Walder turned to Elgara. “Did you know about her?”

“No. I do know they were working with a complex that had at least one broodmother. They did not say that the broodmother was Awakened or one of the Sidereal, but I suppose this could be her.”

“I don’t suppose you really have a reason to lie, unless she’s even more important than what you say,” Walder told the darkspawn. “Sorry, Surana and Arainai, but you’ve changed.”

Alim felt like he should be taking offense at that, but could only concede the point.

 

They chose the battlefield. They brought the Madman there, on a stretcher, and gave her lyrium so she would have more resonance with any existing phylactery. The Wardens herded a large number of wild tusket into a hastily-built pen, to attract Razikale. (The Architect suggested burning an offering pyre of herbs, incense, and seven black ewes, but those were unavailable. In particular, neither the Architect nor the Madman were able to get anyone to understand what kind of incense they were referring to; probably it had ceased to be made during the First Blight and its sack of Minrathous.) Elgara called out to Razikale as well, as best she knew how, drinking lyrium until her vision blurred and her ears rang.

The Architect spent a forest’s worth of charcoal and birchbark working out his binding spell.

“Hurry up,” Elgara told him, as all the Warden mages with any knowledge of the right field of theory fussed with the spell. “You’re complicating this too much. I just pricked my finger, and it worked.”

“It is not that simple, for me. With you, the blood of the god reached out to whomever it could. Now it has you, with a link several days established, and it will take much more to convince the magic that I am better suited. I also swore a binding oath to Urthemiel, once, and even though Urthemiel is dead, there is still a remnant of that to overcome.”

Alim almost dropped his charcoal. Urthemiel was, as far as he knew, very much alive. Morrigan had never told him exactly what had happened with Kieran and the resurrected Flemeth (and that was an alarming concept, in juxtaposition with a Sidereal Magister) and the Eluvian, only that she was no longer worried about the soul of Urthemiel becoming corrupted from his mere presence, but Kieran himself was, as far as he knew, still very much alive in Orlais, and likely that meant that Urthemiel was as well.

“It might be more than a remnant,” he said. “Such oaths—you probably swore until _your_ death, not ‘as long as we both live’ like a personal liege fealty oath. So without an even stronger binding, you might still be bound from service to another even though Urthemiel is dead. I think that’s going to be the main difficulty here, not Elgara’s bond. What was the exact process and wording for the oath you took?”

The Architect told him. Everyone scribbled a lot more.

The end result was probably overkill, but overkill was what they wanted. The Architect would inject a dram of Razikale’s blood mixed with a dram of strong lyrium solution into a vein in the palm of his left hand—the vein that was said to lead straight back to the heart—while holding in his mouth a small scroll inscribed with an oath he had written to Razikale, also in Razikale’s blood. He would do this himself—it had to be emphasized that he did this of his own will. He also insisted on kneeling while doing it, even though it would have been safer to do this lying down, especially the way his skull was. Alim made the Architect do practice injections with a syringe full of saline, because that was a fiddly area.

Then, finally, the real thing. Elgara held the Architect’s shoulders, in case he started to fall. She was a bit worried about falling herself, if a fit of the sight took her, but the Architect had said that her bond with Razikale meant that she should be the one to do this. This close, she saw the little shift in tension when the needle hit the vein, and then the Architect pressed the plunger home.

He did not even have the time to pull the plunger out before he went rigid. That much lyrium intravenously was a stupid idea, Elgara thought—and then she was pulled into it, as well. This time, she was in two places at once, feet on the ground and hands on a corrupted man’s shoulders, but also high in the air, held up by magic as well as wings, and she felt Razikale feel and saw Razikale see where she stood, through the Architect’s senses, and he through Razikale’s, in a sensory loop that rebounded until it whited out.

In a thaig many miles away, the Augur sensed it as well. Just like Elgara, she had been seeing through Razikale’s eyes in short bursts ever since the god had awoken, but until now she had not known of Elgara’s similar connection. Now, though, she saw her god’s magic light up the Architect like a beacon, and saw the magic feed on itself and grow until it could not be contained by the ghoul who held it or the Warden touching him. And then once that happened, it shrank down to a faint glow, just as a candle that burns all its wax diminishes into a fading spark at the end of its blackened wick. She should have been the one to do this. She should have been able to do this without him at all. But she had failed her god, landing in flesh that could not move outside this room, and so now the Architect’s soul had two masters.

The vision faded, and the Augur shifted her sight to the edge of her complex. The Last Moon had discovered her hiding place, and now her hurlocks fought them. Perhaps the Watchman’s soldiers would win, and release her from these chains of flesh.

Back in the Frostback Basin, Elgara and the Architect wobbled to the ground. The Architect spat the scroll into his left hand and winced. “I do not think we have to worry about whether Razikale will show up,” he said.

“The question is, will the Last Moon show up?” said Walder.

They waited. Razikale was a slowly-growing dot in the sky, and then what looked like a bat a few hundred feet off if one did not know better. Walder and Nesha packed up the used birchbark, because someone would be interested in the magical theory. Elgara nursed a potion to counteract the lyrium jitters, which threatened to turn into a terrible migraine. Alim tried to keep the Madman comfortable, using up as little of his own magic as he could.

And then a pillar of fire rose just on their side of the treeline, and several mages stepped into view. Eyras was the only one Alim recognized. A different mage, a darkspawn wearing a robe covered with gold chains, spoke.

“You are not running away this time, Architect.” He paused and looked around. “How did you get so many Wardens?”

“Idiot,” said Der Feuer—which was probably not the best way to start negotiations, but he did not care. “Razikale woke up. You think the Wardens wouldn’t notice?”

“I have surrendered myself to them, Appraiser. Under the terms of our agreement, they will protect me.”

“Hey, Appraiser,” Elgara yelled from behind them. “Did you know Andoral was killed by an elf?” She had always taken satisfaction in the irony of that fact, and now for once she had a chance to point it out.

“I prefer to think of it instead as that Andoral’s last act was to kill an elf,” replied the Appraiser coolly.

“I’m pretty sure Andoral’s last act was to thrash around and shit itself,” said Zevran.

The expected attack came, but not what he had been predicting. Instead, a force seized his limbs and he lurched toward Alim involuntarily, daggers raised in an amateur’s preparation for a strike. Unable to do anything else, he screamed and hoped it was enough warning. Several Dispels hit him at once, and it loosened the magic enough for him to drop his weapons, but the strings remained. And then there was a bubble. Alim’s. At least the magic was familiar.

“Honestly, this is getting to be a pattern,” Alim said, watching Zevran in the bubble. “Let me guess,” he said, raising his voice to project it to the Appraiser. “It works best on people with just enough innate magic that a spell will take well, but not enough to be mages and have a chance of resisting it. Or else you’re into controlling people with knives. Could be either one.”

“Oh for the gods’ sake, I’ve had enough of this,” groused the other darkspawn mage. “We can handle them.” He rotated his staff in an upright circle three times, left-handed, then slammed it down into a rooted stance.

“Firestorm!” hissed the Architect, who had evidently seen this spell before, but Alim had already spun in a circle, marking his allies for the keying of personal shields, and by the time the Architect had finished speaking, he, too, was in an almost identical rooted stance powering them.

“Elgara! You’re our healer today. Even started on the lyrium early. I’ll defend and assist.” Without changing stance, Alim swept his right hand out to the side and wreathed Nesha’s sword in sickly purple light. He considered striking out with mana clash, next, but the only one he was sure he could take was Eyras, and that was the one he did not want to kill.

Walder, it seemed, had heard the Architect’s warning as well. Fire was his element; instead of directly attacking, he tried to wrest control of the spell from the emissary casting it. Fire exploded in the sky, and a few balls of fire turned back on their caster—who shrugged them off. Unsurprisingly, their opponents were shielded as well. Who was casting? Not having the preternatural spell sense of his former mentor, Walder looked around for the spell’s characteristic stance. There. One of the non-darkspawn Last Moon—not the one with the fancy staff who seemed to be important, but one of the other ones with clothing and equipment that screamed ‘mass-produced uniform.’ He planted a pillar of fire on the man and added a touch of earthquake. The heat alone might get through the shields, and the combination might be enough to make him lose the spell. If it was not…he thought about asking Surana to take care of the problem, but he was not sure that Surana could still do that spell, what with having been changed into a darkspawn, and they would be pretty fucked if he lost too much mana to sustain the shields. And they might have more than one arcanist. Given the choice, he would have brought more than one arcanist. Halamshiral had not had many that were not also spirit healers, though, and he had left most of the healers to deal with the Avvar refugees, and the rest were with the force thinning out the horde and hopefully driving Razikale this way. Truth be told, he had expected them to get back here sooner, and he had not expected the binding ritual to directly summon Razikale. It was a good thing that the Last Moon had only expected to fight a small group of darkspawn here and now.

Walder kept throwing fire spells and countering the darkspawn’s fire spells, because that was what he was good at. Nesha tried to stab people, and managed to interrupt a few spells—even with the elemental weapons spell, by the time her sword got through their shields, it had lost most of its momentum and would be a bruise or paper cut at best. That spell was supposed to work against _armor_ —between Templars and other mages, there was little reason to have it be effective against magic shields. Still, it was helping. The Architect, though, seemed to have drawn the sole attention of both the chain-draped darkspawn emissary and the important-looking human mage, and the resulting duel was so spectacular that Walder wished he was free just to watch it. He kept sneaking glimpses out of the corner of his eyes, anyway. All three of them used a stunningly intricate Tevinter style of staffwork; terrible for a pitched battle, and probably should have been terrible for this battle except that everyone else saw fit to let them go at it on their own, but amazing to look at. Then Nesha got in a hit on the fire darkspawn, and Walder chased it with a rapid succession of grease and a blue fireball.

Alim, who mostly just had to keep the shields up, was free to watch, so he did. The Architect used force to throw off both his opponents—really the only reason the fight was anything like fair—and then followed it with a hail of hexes, and some fire for the occasional variation. It was the staffwork and form that were impressive. All three fought as if there were an arena of onlookers—indeed, given that all three were Tevinter alti, where even today duels were still legally accepted as a method of settling disputes, they had probably been trained in mind of such an audience. It was completely impractical to make a draining hex take the form of a giant mosquito before it hit, not least because it pre-signaled the move, but the Architect did. He used bifurcated fireballs where one would do, or made them blindingly bright (but actually less hot, from the color), or made them look like dragons.

Fortunately, Eyras and the Appraiser were using similar frills. Well, Eyras was mostly just trying to keep up, having been trained in modern times in a declining Imperium, but he still wreathed and twisted lightning in ways Alim wished he had learned how to do. Or at least, Eyras did that when he was not getting force-punched in the stomach. And the Appraiser fought with pure entropy, in ways that almost should not have been possible—chains of black smoke that ate away at clothing and skin and left the Architect slowed (Alim cast Haste on him, careful not to let the spell be visible), balls of black Nothing, blood-sucking vines, acid, and even facsimile illusions of himself, plus any number of fantastically shaped hexes. It was a perfect fusion of mortal entropy and Blight magic. The Madman had told Alim that the Architect had been considered a rather mediocre mage in the old Imperium, when he himself had seen how the man had a grasp of magic equal to the best enchanters of the modern world; now, he knew what she meant. The Architect’s casting was elaborate and powerful, but by comparison conservative and repetitive. A good half of Entropy pedagogy was about form and illusion, particularly for specialists—and the Architect, though his battle casting style made use of a fair number of hexes, was not one—but the Appraiser’s dueling surpassed modern mages’ wildest dreams. And of course that skill and training was built on the blood and bodies of generations of slaves, and had enabled the man who benefitted from it to use the blood and bodies of more slaves to become the precise reason why mages today did not have that skill and training.

And then fire streamed down from the heavens, a deluge of roaring light, cast by no one on the field. No one on the field could have cast such a thing of such strength without an abbatoir or a cartload of lyrium. Razikale had arrived.

The Architect should probably have sensed her coming, but he had been dueling two mages at once, surrounded by half a dozen people who were all casting, most of whose magic was unfamiliar to him. Not that he had ever been the best at that kind of magic, anyway. In some ways, even Zevran was better at it, though he would never admit it. The duel ended as everyone suddenly strove to preserve themselves from the heat; Eyras cast either a blizzard or a rainstorm, which turned into a choking cloud of steam immediately. A few paces away, Alim spent most of his remaining mana on the shields, infusing the strength of the Void into them. The Blight magic pulled at the Wardens’ veins, and Walder even had some idea of what exactly Alim had done (Avernus was another secret reserved for a stupidly high security clearance), but the inferno was too loud for him to ask about it.

The Architect remembered that he was supposed to be trying to kill Razikale. Kill her to save her, he had pledged. Drawing on the faint song in his mind, he located the dragon and cast ice at it, calling the giant icicles into being inches away from Razikale’s scales so that they would not melt before they got to her.

He edged closer to Alim. “How did you take down the last one?” he yelled, over the fire’s din.

“We had a ballista! Zevran fixed it whenever it jammed. Try to hit the wings; it’ll be easier if it’s downed.”

Fortunately, the opposing mages seemed to have decided on a similar strategy—and Razikale was mostly attacking them. The fire breath occasionally stopped for a few seconds—it seemed that even god-dragons had to breathe—and everyone used the interval to throw ice at it. Nesha had a crossbow, but her aim was not very good and so the bolts just bounced off Razikale’s scales. She switched to the wings, which she could hit, but the damage was pretty minor. A slingshot and grenades would have been much better.

Walder hated ice. It was like trying to do fire backwards. That had actually made it one of the easier elements for him to learn, other than the part where he had tended to set fires with the leftover heat from creating the ice, but it still felt wrong. He took out his frustration on the dragon’s wing joints, sucking the heat out of them until the water in her body froze. The darkspawn and the Tevinter mages were going for showy damage—idiots. They had not trained under a healer. A dragon was shaped very differently from a person, but many of the same things applied. The body protected the head and vital organs very well, but spared much less for joints, by comparison. When Razikale began to list, it was almost entirely his doing—Surana and Du Loup were still shielding and healing.

The next barrage of flames started. Walder cast his own rather flimsy shield to block out how Blight-y Surana’s much stronger shield felt and knocked back a lyrium potion. This time the flames ended much sooner than before. He did not know if this was because of the damage he had done, or if the dragon was running out of whatever made her able to breathe fire. He was pretty sure dragons had a fire gland, but he wondered if there was a magic component as well. This time around, he decided to focus on Razikale’s neck joints, which were better protected than the wings but potentially a much better payout.

Then the Architect rose into the air, and Walder lost the spell. “What the actual fuck?”

Alim, shielding, had seen the Architect drink three lyrium potions at once, and had assumed he was just running out of mana. That had been a lot of casting earlier, with a lot more to come, and the Architect was not worried about his current body surviving this fight. But when the Architect started hovering in the middle of the battle, he was for a moment confused about what on earth he was trying to do. Then the Architect got closer to the dragon, and suddenly Alim’s mind showed him the memory of Riordan, and he had a sickening suspicion about what the Architect was going to do.

The Architect landed on the dragon’s neck, just behind the head. He clamped his long hands onto the sharp ridge at the base of her horns—Alim saw the black blood run down, and he was fairly sure the injury was deliberate. And then Razikale started having a seizure in mid-air.

The Wardens ran in the opposite direction of where Razikale veered. All but abandoning the rest of the shields, Alim quadrupled the one on the Architect as Razikale fell and crashed into the burning treeline. Razikale was still moving, and this would be pointless if the Architect was smashed flat before she died. The Architect kept his seat, still clinging to the dragon and casting whatever spell was obviously pulping her brain. Distantly, Alim remembered that there was a spell that prevented force mages from being knocked over. Then a burst of white light exploded out from Razikale’s head, and Alim was forced to look away. Even with his hands over his eyes, it was bright enough to sear like the sun.

Then it was gone. Alim opened his eyes and blinked until enough of the spots cleared. Razikale lay with her tail half on the battlefield and her head in the woods, where presumably the Architect or his body were as well. Alim cast out with his magic for their essences, and found…nothing.

The other two Sidereal Magisters, Eyras, and the Last Moon mages were too stunned to start the fight again, and almost out of magic besides. Alim was pretty sure they had used all their lyrium on the dragon.

“She’s…dead,” said the Forgewright.

“I would hope so,” said Alim, crossing the battlefield. “The question is which of these mages the Architect is going to come back as. Because his essence is definitely not over in the trees.”

“‘Come back as?’” asked Eyras, puzzled.

Alim laughed—a darkspawn’s laugh, and it was a terrifying sound. Eyras took a step back and shuddered. “He never told you that, did he? Not any of them? Walking into the Fade, physically, changes the nature of your soul. If any of them are killed, they possess the nearest Tainted anthropoid, preferably a human of the same gender. The Wardens know about this—that’s why they ran away when Razikale went down. That leaves you. Maybe your little friends, but were any of them as highly initiated as you?”

“I don’t feel any different,” said Eyras, though he looked like he might pass out.

“I think it might have missed you. It usually takes about as long as turning into an abomination, by all reports. Keep an eye on your friends. The Wardens are doing the same.” Privately, Alim was praying Walder did not turn. “I’m going to go inspect the bodies.”

“How do you know the Architect is not still alive?” asked the Appraiser.

“I’m a seer. Scryer. Same difference. I know.”

Razikale was definitely dead. The Architect had apparently cast an earthquake inside her skull; blood and brain matter leaked out her nostrils. She was now nothing more than the largest magical artifact in Thedas. Some of the Warden mages would have to freeze that, before she started to stink. Alim was not going to do it; he was almost burnt out. And the Architect…

Alim was a healer, and he was a Warden, and he had spent most of his adult life fighting a succession of wars. He had seen many fresh bodies, and seen them begin to decay magically as well as physically. He had seen the corpses of abominations—some of them his friends, before they were possessed—where the mortal soul was shattered by the entering demon. The magical essence of a person lingers, diminished, for hours before it slowly seeps into the Fade, and even in pieces that essence is still recognizable as the fragments of itself, to one who can see it.

The Architect’s corpse lay slumped over Razikale’s head, leaking black blood from its everywhere (consistent with massive spirit damage), and the fragments of his soul were all still there, as were the fragments of Razikale’s. And those fragments chittered and scrabbled and tried to seek out new hosts, but they were too weak to leave on their own or possess the unwilling, or, in Razikale’s case, to shape the Architect’s body into her preferred form. Alim was not about to make physical contact with that body. Instead, although he could _see_ that the Architect’s heart had stopped, he found a stick and took the pulse through that, as one did for contagious diseases. There was no pulse, just as he had expected.

Underbrush crunched behind Alim, and he turned to see that everyone had finally followed him. Even Zevran, who had been abandoned as a murder puppet and let out of the shield bubble sometime around when Razikale had descended on the battle. Even the Madman, leaning on Zevran.

“Well?” asked the Appraiser.

Alim turned, slowly smiling a sharp-toothed grin. “Well, it looks like we finally found a way to kill you guys. You just have to fight an Archdemon, is all. The soul of a god is more powerful than the soul of a man who walked in the Fade.” Alim saw Elgara about to examine the body. “No! Don’t touch that!”

“If you don’t want her touching it, is he really dead then?”

“I don’t want anyone picking up a shattered piece of the Architect. Or of Razikale. That just sounds like a bad time. It should probably be fine in a few days, but I wouldn’t touch it. I wouldn’t burn it before then, either. Wards only”

“The Architect turned himself over to the Wardens, in front of witnesses, in exchange for his safety if he helped us kill Razikale,” said Walder. “Therefore, any fragments of his soul belong in the custody of the Wardens. Any fragments of anyone else’s soul in the same body have to come along. If you want to mess with any of the soul fragments, you have to surrender to us too.”

“I would say that is legally nonsensical, but this area is sadly no longer under Imperium jurisdiction and it would actually be a very complicated case there,” said the Appraiser.

“You were a _lawyer_?” Walder asked.

“The Cult of Andoral was responsible for the Property Law Court.” The Appraiser squinted at the Architect’s body, then held out a hand over it. “Gods, that’s a shitty binding. That’s like tying up a package with a slave’s knot and steel cable. I mean, it worked, but it’s painful to look at.”

“Well, unfortunately the expert on binding magic was trying to kill us at the time. Thanks for nothing,” said Alim.

“Razikale is dead. I can’t guarantee what the Watchman will say, but I doubt you will be a target anymore so long as you avoid Lusacan.”

“And anyone trying to make trouble with him is now also making trouble with the Wardens,” reminded Walder.

“I think I still deserve an apology,” said Zevran. “That is my husband you tried to make me murder. Not that it’s the first time someone tried to make me murder him, but definitely the most unpleasant.”

“You were the most susceptible target. It was not personal.”

“I’ll take that, I guess.” Later, Zevran thought. He could feel violated about that later. Or practically never, if he shoved the memory deep enough. Appraiser of Andoral? Who was that? Oh, right there. Nice to meet you.

“So are either of you two going to turn yourselves in?” asked Walder, gesturing at the Forgewright and the Appraiser. “Help clean up what you started, hundreds of years ago? Or you lot,” he added to Eyras and the Last Moon mages. “If you say no, we’ll let you walk away so long as you stay peaceful, because I don’t want to fight that battle right now, but we would welcome the historical insight from you ancient magisters, and the Wardens are always looking for more mages, those of you who aren’t darkspawn.”

“I know what you Wardens did to Corypheus, and I know you would consider me almost equally dangerous,” said the Appraiser. “If you want a treatise on binding magic, as thanks for letting me go and so I never have to see such a badly-done example of it again, I can probably find the address.”

“One Fortress Way, Weisshaupt City, Anderfels, attention of the High Chamberlain,” said Walder. The mailroom could handle the rest.

“Did the Madman surrender?” asked the Forgewright.

“Yes,” said Walder. “Which one are you?” he added. “I know he’s the Appraiser, but not who you are.” There had not been time to be introduced before they had started fighting.

“The Forgewright of Toth. And—”

“Fuck. Should have known that. You’re a _pyromancer._ ”

“And I’ll go with you, I was going to say. I am no more danger than any other pyromancer with a case of the Blight.”

“I told you the Last Moon was a bad idea,” grumbled the Madman.

“Yes, you told me so.” The Forgewright huffed out a sound that was almost a laugh. “The _Architect_ , though?”

“The _Augur_. And not like that.”

“Okay, that’s one,” said Walder, a bit uncomfortably. He looked around at the mortal mages.

“I will have nothing to do with _Wardens_ ,” sneered Eyras. “All offense intended. Donec nox tegit omnem.”

“Donec omni Archdemon-i mortues est to you too,” said Walder.

“Please do not make me regret my decision,” said the Forgewright, wincing.

“He’ll probably apologize once Eyras is out of earshot,” said Alim.

The other Last Moon mages turned themselves in. They had not signed up for _fighting_ god-dragons, and the experience had left them a bit unnerved. Two of them actually turned out to be Warden double agents. “Lot of court-martials this month,” remarked Walder.

Eyras and the Appraiser left. The Wardens tied up the ‘prisoners’ with robe sashes and spare shoelaces. (They had brought rope, but Razikale had burned it. Or maybe that was the Forgewright, to be honest.) The rest of the Wardens regrouped—as it turned out, they had been fighting the Last Moon—and then it was off to Weisshaupt or Halamshiral.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Walder's Tevene is a bit rusty, but he's mostly just being a little shit. "Arch-demon-eye." He knows how to actually pronounce that word.
> 
> I considered killing the Architect from the very beginning. (The other possibility was, briefly, Alim himself. This is a story of ending.) I solidified it as a course of action at some point between chapters 17 and 20, according to my planning document, which I only started at that time. I still don't know if his death is a means of redeeming him or not. Razikale also had to die; originally I was going to have her become corrupted despite the serum, though more slowly than she would have otherwise, but around chapter 34 I started wondering if I really had to do that--after all, she's still a dragon, and untainted High Dragons are plenty destructive on their own.
> 
> Other than that, I've tried to keep the number of deaths relatively low for a darkfic. Alim and the Architect kill 15-20 Dead Legionnaires in chapter 8, and Alim flips his shit about it. They kill a similar number in chapter 39, and the fact that Alim does not flip out about it is of character devolvement (yes, that is the word I meant) significance, even though admittedly he's got a lot going on at the time. The Madman kills and eats one person, again to make a character point. The Architect manages to kill a few people in chapter 37, before Alim stops him from murdering a lot more. No one dies in the last battle with Razikale, nor during Zevran's capture (the Architect and Alim took Zevran and left the others to wake up), although, offscreen, the Wardens did engage with the Last Moon forces, resulting in a small number of casualties on both sides and one canon fatality for the Wardens. So the total death toll of sentient beings is probably about 50, not counting the Legion members Alim was traveling with in the Prologue.


	41. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The End.

The Sixth Blight was resolved even more quickly than the Fifth. Historians spilled oceans of ink comparing the two and speculating on what the Wardens could have done in the Fifth Blight had more of them survived Ostagar. The Wardens had had one fatality fighting the Last Moon, while Razikale had been fought elsewhere; since the Architect could hardly be credited as the Hero of the Sixth Blight, she was named as the Hero instead. Since Razikale’s body was too large to move far, and because there was already an enchanted permanently frozen temple in the Basin itself with which to freeze the body, the Wardens built a minor research outpost there and named it after the false Hero. The Avvar were initially pissed off, but eventually came to an agreement involving a tithe of lowland goods. In everything but official paperwork, the Gloire Moreau Research Station became known as The Dead God’s Hold.

Elgara and Nesha were conditionally acquitted. Technically, the main charge could be construed as a conflict of chains of command—by custom, Warden officers who went on their Callings without having retired first were not automatically demoted or required to resign their commissions. Not that very many high-ranking officers were required to _have_ Callings, anymore, thanks in part to (of all the irony) Surana’s own work, but resignation would now be mandatory in the future. There would even be a ceremony for it, based on some of the traditions of the Legion of the Dead. The two were not demoted, but they were put on probation for ten years and forbidden from further promotion—and Elgara was not allowed to go back to Serault. She and Nesha remained at Weisshaupt for the rest of their careers.

Alim and Zevran formally resigned their old ranks, on the condition that no one was allowed to vivisect the Madman or anyone else. The Wardens could have just stripped them of rank, but the fact that they were legally already dead would have made the paperwork difficult, and enough people remembered them positively. They joined the medical research team assigned to the Madman, with some restrictions. The Madman transformed into a broodmother, having been given a specially designed cell, and let the Wardens test any number of medications on her, considering the side effects better than vivisection. She preferred when the side effects included being high as a kite, and the Wardens learned to aim for that. After all, being a broodmother was not easy. The Forgewright gave several years’ worth of debriefing on magical theory and puttered around a magic-proofed forge adjacent to the Madman’s cell.

*****

It was almost too easy to get out. Alim had not told the Wardens what he could do with his voice (and the Forgewright had not told on him either, probably underestimating his ability because he had needed glyphs and a ritual to do what he had to the horde), and so instead of sending him to the Vimmarks, they had let him stay in a cell at Weisshaupt, and even let him stay in the same cell as Zevran. And all that had been fine for a few years, but Walder had retired, and his replacement looked much less favorably on the amnesty program. Alim and Zevran did not want to be killed, and they even more did not want the Wardens to find out if, as they suspected, they could not be killed. They left a note stating that no one else had helped with their escape, and that they appreciated the kindness of the Wardens, but the constant surveillance was putting a crimp in their sex life.

Alim’s cell had anti-magic runes, but those focused on counteracting the Fade, not the Void. It still dulled his powers considerably, but after years of practice, it was easy to convince a guard to go near enough to the cell that Zevran could take his keys, and to prevent him from realizing that he had gone that close or that Zevran had the keys, or to notice the empty cell once they left. And then Zevran took over, concealing them both, and no one noticed two hooded figures walking down Fortress Way and into the city. Once they were in the city, no one remarked on two figures in hoods at night. So they went on, down into the Deep Roads, walking until they found a thaig unmarked on Warden maps. Alim had taken some of his books with them, but no equipment; he did not even try to set up a lab. That was done, and now he meant to enjoy being dead. Zevran was with him, and the Architect could not get in the way.

And who knows what has happened in all the ages since? But they have probably stayed there, only coming to the surface to hunt, if at all. Mortals will never know.

In a better-mapped part of the Deep Roads, the Wardens tracking them found a crude image of three birds carved into a clay deposit. One seemed to be done by a different hand than the other two, though with the same knife. The trackers thought this was a sign: Two ravens for Dirthamen, Alim’s god, and one for Zevran, whose former alias was “the Raven.” Below the birds, one of them had scrawled a cryptic phrase, perhaps as a warning against pursuit; perhaps as a wish:

 

**“In our eternity, only darkness reigns.”**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's been a part of this process! Thanks for putting up with this sprawling abomination of questionable kinks and bad experimental dialogue. I'd never written anything of this length before. I knew it would be awful in places, but I kept going anyway, because how else would I figure out how to do it, other than by doing it? I learned a lot from this last year, writing this, and I am looking forward to applying that knowledge to many works to come.
> 
> Special thanks to everyone who commented, beta read, or commissioned or pledged to me. (Which was as much recipes as fanfic.) You're all great!
> 
> As always, the title of this work (and its last line, in this chapter) are taken from [Codex Entry: The Lost Temple of Dirthamen](http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Codex_entry:_The_Lost_Temple_of_Dirthamen). Also special thanks to the Dragon Age Wikia, for being an invaluable reference for writing this. I should probably also link the [Interactive Map of Thedas](https://bendingwind.bitbucket.io/). Seriously, I could not have written this without these projects by other fans.
> 
> So yeah. It's done. You didn't think I'd leave Alim and Zevran stuck with the Wardens like some worldstates have Avernus or the Architect doing, did you? They deserve their eternity, even after all the shits they've been in this book. They'll be a lot less shitty without the Architect around, honestly. Originally I was just going to have them run as soon as the Architect went down, but characters happened. So, The End. It's weird, having finished something. Guess I've got to start outlining the next one, now.


End file.
